Back to Britain with a Bang!

I thought I'd fill you in on the rest of my bike bus journey and day now that I'm finally cosied up in my tent listening once again to the patter of British rain.

The rain actually started approx 2 minutes after leaving Dover this morning. It occasionally stopped en route and then started to really batter down. Those on the bike bus found it most amusing that I would be camping in such conditions tonight. Hmmm!

Originally, we were due into Boroughbridge around tea time. Unfortunately with the delays due to bad weather, I didn't leave the bus until around 8.15pm. I didn't realise it was dark here at this time, it gets dark an hour later in France. So I'm trying to locate the bolts to put my handlebars back in place in the dark & the rain & load all the panniers on. I'm in normal clothes not cycle kit so was frantically pulling my waterproofs out of various panniers. Helmet lights on, rear flashing lights on, headtorch on...oh, battery dead. No headtorch. Never mind, the streets are lit.....

Not the ones I needed to cycle on. Great. My little front helmet light is so others can see me not for me to see the way. Off I pedalled and, after a mile, somehow found myself back in the same place. What?! Ok, I'd been up since 4am UK time, on a ferry & bus all day, now it was dark, raining, my headtorch wasn't working at the worst time & I seemed to be really disoriented and clearly not thinking straight. STOP!

Call the campsite from somewhere sensible. The owners guided me from a big obvious roundabout and so I continued. I then had to call again when I ended up in the next village having gone too far & down the wrong road. They gave me the clearest instructions you can give to mankind (Boroughbridge isn't very big, by the way!) & they stood outside the campsite in the rain flashing a torch to guide me in!! What service!

Best of all, they'd saved me some milk for my brekkie tomorrow, the wonderful, wonderful people!

Now the fun part, getting the tent up in the rain and the dark and, oh yes, a bit of a breeze without destroying my broken tent pole. I literally coached myself through every step as you would a child and did most things by feel since sight was barely possible. Tent poles are quite slippy when wet as well. Incredibly, my tent has remained dry inside so I'm grateful! I'm actually more proud of myself for this than most of the trip! Particularly as I did it from a position of stress having cycled in the dark and got lost, much as I'd remained as calm as pos.

The adventure never ends!

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2