Futilely trawling through some back issues of the Bodhi Tree for inspiration after a quiet week, which included a tough day entertaining clients at the races, I note that it was four years ago this weekend, on a strange whim, that I “ran” 62 miles down the Ridgeway from just outside Oxford to the stone ring at Avebury. 16 hours of torture. Madness. Talking of which our summer holiday this year is a cycling trip to the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. Wasn’t my idea. This is all Sophie’s doing. I really don’t know what came over her. She hasn’t ridden a bike since university days. Anyway last weekend we went to Halfords and she is now the proud owner of a Carrera Crossfire 2. We’ve had one training ride together and it went moderately well, but for the next couple of months I’d maybe give the quiet country lanes of Suffolk around Gazeley a miss if I were you. I think this could get quite messy.
On the road, before Hen set off in her van for a tour of the European continent, we agreed that, just as a precaution, we would set her phone up on my Find My Phone app. It was meant to be used in the event of an emergency so I could see where she was if we hadn’t heard from her for a while, but with the best will in the world I havn’t been able to resist tracking her movements over these early days of her adventure. On day 1 she landed in Dieppe and drove some 300 miles ending up at around midnightin what I could see on Google Earth was a small car park in the middle of a wood half a mile or so from one of these enormous, long Atlantic beaches. A day or two later and her phone showed she was in Nantes. In my defence she hadn’t responded to a couple of messages I’d sent over the weekend so I was monitoring her movements all the more intently and, as the phone moved around the centre of the town, I grew ever more convinced that someone must have stolen it at the very least. My attempts to call her, Whatsapp or text her were all being ignored till I tracked her to a Total filling station. I was about to call the petrol station directly to ask if they could see a decrepit old green van in the forecourt – if my French was up to that – when I had one last go at ringing her. This time she answered, her voice slightly hushed and echoing. “Daveed” she said “….for goodness sake can you leave me alone….I’m trying to have a pee!” Quel relief.
So anyway, all’s good it seems and attached is a photo she sent me of the back of Mowgli. By the way if anyone has a good idea for the title of a blog she is writing about art and travelling through Europe living in a van would you let me know.
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