Left to My Own Devizes (Saturday 05/05/2018)
The omens were good. The cycle path from Bristol to Reading was open and Harts Bakery was overflowing with high calorie cycle fodder. The bikes gleamed in the benevolent bank holiday sunshine and National Cycle Route 4 (NCR4) beckoned. Everyone came who said they would, barring a few el eventh hour excuses. No o ne was crushed by a falling piano or succumbed to recurrent plumbago but a couple, quite honestly, declined in favour of better offers. A bad excuse is always better than a simple no show and i n the end there were four of us. My brother John came from Ross, Mika from Reading; Paul and I made it to the start line from the next post code. And then, when all seemed to be going so smoothly, fate shoved an unwelcome stick into our collective spokes. The splintering crunch was punctual departure face-planting onto the tarmac of best laid plans. Distracted by the breakfast of champions, John developed a flat tyre somewhere between tucking in...