It was not just the painful bite on my thigh, along with the almost irresistible desire to have a good scratch, that put pay to any meditative thoughts on this the eighth day of cycling; the other aspect was the road surface which was appalling and thus required considerable concentration whilst descending into Keswick. Perhaps one thought in passing though, physical pain and adverse circumstances can, in any situation life throws at you, make it very difficult to give space to anything even vaguely contemplative.
I finally caught up with the others at Keswick Youth Hostel. This particular hostel is very attractive both as a building and also due to its location. It stands on the banks of the river Greta next to a road bridge over the river. The main inconvenience is that you have to park on the bridge, or just beyond it, in order to unpack because there is no parking space for cars at the hostel. We had worked out a system whereby we all had overnight bags packed each day so we did not have to lug all our belongings from car to hostel every evening and in this particular situation this system really came into its own. Once we had located our rooms, we took it in turns to down the unpalatable but essential protein drink and then headed off to the nearest pub to get rid of the taste with a couple of well-earned pints of the local brew. This done we returned to the hostel where Julia, Jo and Lauren had cooked up a tasty stir-fry for supper.
I have employed the idea of our journey as being something like a pilgrimage, a metaphor, among others, that I really like. On the way into Keswick Julia had visited what is, for her, a significant shrine; a must do visit to a place which could, under no circumstance, be bypassed – the Head Quarters of Lakeland Ltd, which is situated in Ambleside. For Julia a trip to the Lake District is not complete without a visit to Lakeland and she does not rest easy until this need is fulfilled. Now the reason why I mention this, apart from taking a husbandly interest in what floats my wife’s boat, is that she returned from the trip to Lakeland armed with a game which she bought and which we subsequently played after supper. Replete, we adjourned to the games room, incidentally the venue where, on the last trip, I triumphed at playing pool, and we played the game she had kindly provided. The game involved holding a small cardboard cut-out of a guitar whilst humming a tune, the rest of us had to guess what the tune was. The first one to guess correctly got a point. This game proved to be a moment of supreme triumph for Scott, who had an uncanny knack of guessing the right tune no matter how badly it was hummed. He won the game by a mile. For my part, let’s just say I would have done better to sit this one out resting on my laurels from the previous sojourn in Keswick. The other thing that we discovered that evening was that Lauren can’t hum. I guess that will not greatly impede her progress through life.
It had in many ways been a tough day’s cycling and so we were glad to turn in after having had a good laugh at each other’s expense through a ridiculous game. Yellow jersey to Scott on this one however; credit where credit is due.
“And there was evening and there was morning, an eight day.”
Ezekiel's Wheels 