With some reluctance I left Salisbury behind after a quick Pret breakfast in its impressively large and almost completely empty market square. It was a sunny day, a good one to be out on a bike. I had a 30 mile ride to complete, and a train back to London, where I would ride across town to St Pancras and another train home.
I started out as I had left off, following the Avon valley along quiet roads. It worked well again, but my road slowly sloped away from the river and gradually took aim for the New Forest National Park. This was perfect, so I just stuck with it, going straight on at every junction. It was as if someone knew where I needed to be, and wanted to make it as easy as could be. And attractive, too. The villages I passed through were charming, and I stopped in one for a quick tea and home made tiffin at the village store cum cafe. The men at the next table in the sunshine were lamenting the state of village politics, which I’m sure is a thorny business wherever you are, and often left to the older generations who typically have a bit more time on their hands. These fellows seemed like gentle enough souls, but they talked like they meant business and their hearts were obviously in the right place.
I had judged that I could afford a short stop on the way, but I had also hoped to have time to enjoy my final coastal destination on this fine day, and make my train in comfort. It all came together beautifully. The New Forest, which I don’t really know, is a lovely place to ride a bike. The countryside is pretty rather than stunning, and quite gentle and rolling, with a fair amount of tree cover, but plenty of wide, open spaces, too. The whole region appears to be common grazing land, and when you cross a boundary in or out you also cross a cattle grid. Once inside, there are free roaming animals aplenty, especially horses, ponies and donkeys, but also cows and who knows what else. The equine populace seems to delight in hanging about the roadside verges, which are typically generous, and I also saw several donkeys outside a roadside pub. This all adds to the character and uniqueness of the region. The villages are widely spaced around their broad greens, with many a pond or swampy area from which I saw animals drinking. I also came across waterside places that were suited to paddling and picnics, which is exactly what was happening this Bank Holiday Monday. In wetter months, I would have passed though several fords, but the streams were not high enough to wet the road today.
And so I whiled away the morning cycling along pretty lanes and generally enjoying the surroundings and – in general – lack of traffic. There seems to be a blanket speed limit in the whole park of 40 mph, which was being respected.
Just a couple of miles from the coast, it all ended and things returned to normal. I cycled through a mile of bungalows and reached the low cliffs of Barton on Sea at a point where you could look directly across to The Needles on the Isle of Wight, and also over the sweeping bay below Christchurch and around to Hengistbury Head. There looked to be plenty of sand and it was quite a lovely sight. And exactly at this point on the headland was a pub with a large garden just made for admiring it all, while I ate a seafood flatbread and enjoyed a pint. Luckily, I still had plenty of time on my hands. Sometimes things just work.
And here I was, more than two hundred miles from home in a dead straight vertical line running south from Hathersage. It wasn’t a bad place to finish up. And, as luck would have it, less than two miles away was a train station that would deliver me directly to London Waterloo in two hours.
I dozed on the busy train and allowed everyone else off before I slowly unloaded my bike and walked along the platform to the barriers, emerging under the famous station clock. I had an hour and it was a lovely day, and a Bank Holiday, so I thought I would head straight to the South Bank and follow my nose through the crowds and over the Thames. There were people everywhere so I couldn’t cycle. After fifteen minutes I had almost reached the Hungerford Bridges over to Charing Cross; but first, I felt, a photo would be good. I made to lean my bike against the embankment railings. Often I will use the single pannier to my advantage at moments like this. Which is when I noticed that I didn’t have it! Shit, I had left it on the luggage rack on the train! What an idiot.
My lack of forward progress had meant I was still very close to Waterloo Station, so I thought I had to return and at least attempt to find my bag. It was a long shot. Would the same train even still be there? It took me another five minutes to thread through the milling crowds, but I talked my way back through the barrier onto the platform and entered what I thought was the right carriage of the right train. There was no pannier to be seen. I got off again and saw a man in a dayglow jacket on the platform. I explained my predicament and he looked at me with disdain. He didn’t really answer my questions, but walked over to a little hut on the platform and unlocked it. Inside was my bag.
I thanked him and he still didn’t smile. He told me the cleaner found it. I asked if I could thank the cleaner and he gestured to another, much more cheerful man further down the platform. I finally managed to get them both to smile, but I felt – and was – very stupid, and moreover, incredibly lucky to ever see my bag and it’s contents again. Lesson learned.
Despite my error, I will commend myself on how quickly I put things right. I cycled over Waterloo Bridge and along London’s excellent cycle superhighways past the British Museum and Russell Square to St Pancras before my train had boarded. Seamless.
