Fownhope to All Stretton – 49 miles
I awoke with the cock crow. Barbara told us that it’s a myth that cocks only crow in the morning. I suppose it doesn’t make much difference what time they crows, they’ll still wake you if you happen to be asleep. I liked waking up that way. It felt timeless. But Jules said he’d like to strangle the thing, and Phil agreed.
Barbara and team (husband Pete and son Nathan) were downstairs in their Falcon House t-shirts preparing breakfast for the B&B’s paying guests. They served us a pile of warm croissants and coffee. Ric of the molasses flapjacks fame was with us. He had come up the night before from Bristol in his new Mazda Bongo bearing gifts, as he always does: jamon, calamares in brine, other treats. Ric is a very generous person.
Barbara and family clapped us as we left, just as they had when we’d arrived. Alongside the considerable job of running a B&B, they had done everything they could to make us feel welcome, and special. We were confronted straightaway with some challenging hills. It felt a bit like moving a very heavy sofa bed up three flights of stairs before the day had really begun. It’s all in the thighs, a dull aching pain that seems to cime from the marrow of your bones.
But after a few climbs that served to warm up the blood and ignite the lungs, I found some momentum and flow. I even dared to think that after eight days of cycling, I was actually getting a bit stronger. We cycled through the muted August sunshine, through the apple towns of Hereford, which is a very English county. My father was born in Hereford, 102 years and ten days ago. I imagined my grandmother, who I never met because she died of complications relating to the ‘Spanish’ Flu before I was born, carrying her little bundle out of the hospital into sunshine similar to this, and my father’s first view of the world being fields and trees and clouds such as these.
Our ‘carrot’ during the first couple of hours of riding was coffee in Leominster. I’d never visited the place and had no preconceptions. But nothing prepared me for the sadness that hung around its streets. I’ve rarely seen a town with such potential for beauty so sucked of life and vitality, with its faded shop fronts so old and knackered they might even be on the cusp of retro rediscovery, with so many boarded up windows, so much evidence of hopes and dreams hanging by a thread. Geographers and social historians would no doubt be able to tell you why a town like Monmouth seems so favoured, and a town like Leominster so condemned, but it’s a complete mystery to me.
We spent a long time looking for a café that was open and serving and were eventually saved by Coffee No 1 on Corn Square. I left the others to their coffees and cakes and went to take pictures of some of those old shopfronts. ‘Be careful,’ Jools said as I left, such was the atmosphere we had all felt. I was especially attracted to Phill Prothero Cycles and Leominster Gun Room.
Before leaving we stopped at Aldi to buy the ingredients for jolof rice, which Tim had promised to cook that night. We managed to get everything except curry powder. Tim found some in the Co-op next door. That done, we cycled up the main street and into the country beyond, leaving Leominster to its demons and angels.
Richards Castle sounded like a promising place for a lunch break, but the Castle and the old church were way up a hill off the main road. As we turned off to try and find them a woman in pink shirt said, ‘Where are you all going? Are you trying to give yourselves heart-attacks?’ The hill was apparently very steep. She suggested stopping by the village hall, which was just up the main road. ‘We’re having a scarecrow hunt. You’ll be welcome.’ We were all very grateful to her.
Instead of the village hall, we decided to squat in a field dotted with big bales of hay wrapped in plastic. Ric unpacked his jamon and other delights and we ate copiously. After a while, a group of children with painted faces came down a track that crossed the field and stopped to stare at us. ‘Are you scarecrows?’ one of them asked. ‘No, but we could be,’ we answered. Their parents were following close behind and asked us if we were part of the scarecrow hunt. We laughed a lot, and then we dozed in the sun.
After waking up and riding off, we had to warm up again and the first ten minutes were very hard. Our route took us along a long cycle path by a railway and up high over some hills. We came down by a little pub with a very flash white motorbike parked outside. It had a sidecar in the shape of a small boat.
I got my water bottles and went in. There were a few people sitting at the bar, having a cosy chat with the barman. I felt I was walking into someone’s front room. ‘What can I get you,’ the barman asked. ‘I wondered if you could fill these bottles up with water,’ I replied. ‘What…just that?,’ he said indignantly, then took one of the bottles with a peeved expression and filled it. The other people in the bar just looked down at their drinks, or into the air, with sour faces. We’ve been awed and delighted by the kindness of strangers throughout our trip. This incident just threw all those blessings into starker relief.
Ric pealed off to race up the A40 and catch his train at Craven Arms. We followed after a while, the roar of traffic drilling into our ears. The tractors were the worst, huge mastodons of the road bombing along at 50 miles an hour.
Craven Arms has the feel of an American truck stop transplanted into the Welsh hills. The place doesn’t seem to have a centre, or a shape, just a string of outlets along the main road. We bought chocolate and coffee from the service station and used the toilets in Subway then left for All Stretton. The evening was clear and the hills reposed silent and aloof in the glow of the golden hour.
The Ivy in All Stretton marked the end of that day’s journey. I ordered a pint of Butty Bach and a Coca Cola chaser. I don’t drink much coke normally, but after a long day’s ride it’s just the right medicine, as long as the glass is full of ice before pouring. Warm coke is poison.
The bungalow belonging to Jool’s friend Baz was set back from the main road down a track. It was simple and cosy and neat. Baz and family had gone to a festival and we were very happy to have it on loan for the night. It’s large windows and glass doors offered views of the barebacked hills. You could walk out from the garden into the wilderness. Outside the small side window in the kitchen, there was a bird stand. I had a peaceful moment watching the birds come and go, looking so busy as they do, while the hills beyond grew ever more gentle in the fading light.
After showering and ridding ourselves of the sweat and grime of the day, Tim got busy cooking the jolof rice and I got busy blogging. Phil and Jools were waiting for Match Of The Day 2 to start.
The rice was gorgeous. It had that ‘X’ factor common to all good African food that makes you want to eat without thinking or pausing until the fullness of your belly calls a halt. I was exhausted and gave up on the blogging without too much of a struggle. After spending ten minutes or more trying to chase the cat from my room, I switched the light off and lay there drifting off as I listened to muted blare of Match of the Day.
Andy Morgan
J66hjjjnnn
Loving the blog!! You guys are heros!!