Smelly

I stayed in an unsalubrious pub last night. As I approached, quite late after the evening’s performance, I could hear the bingo from quite a distance. The juke box thudded under my room until late. The unopenable window in my tiny space would have opened onto a blank black wall two feet away.

They don’t do breakfast, fortunately, so it’s a good excuse to go to the nearby County Hotel. The bike spent the night in the bar (I turned down the invitation to leave it in the alleyway that already looked like a bicycle graveyard). Getting it out, through the narrow corridor, could only be done vertically and unladen.

Today is – unbelievably – my first really wet day, and I’m soaked when I turn up at the County, less than half a mile away. I try, unsuccessfully, to look respectable.

There are a satisfactorily large number of calories in eggs royale, especially if you precede them with dates and apricots and bananas and things like that, and follow them with pastries, and segue into coffee while you wait for the thundering rain to abate just a little. The cheerful lady on the desk says it’s forecast to be less wet by about 3pm.

Once out of Chelmsford I find myself on the National Cycle Network Route 1, on the kind of tiny quiet roads that seem to belong to a different era. But maybe there’s a reason they’re not highly populated: Cow Watering Lane leads to Pigsty Green Road; a bit later there’s a huge industrial chicken farm, with noisy fans distributing its acrid smell, and then a large-scale sewage works. But I suppose I’m probably not innocent myself in the odour stakes.

There are quite a few roads “Unsuitable for HGVs”. Perhaps that’s why they always seem to have laden trucks exiting them.

And what’s this? The friendly blue cycle route sign immediately followed by a stern red “no bicycles”. Which to believe?

The GPS packed up (because I forgot to charge it last night), but after Welwyn Garden City there’s a straight cycle lane most of the way to St. Albans. It took me a while to work out why there are so many old railway signs, and the occasional abandoned platform.

I hardly stopped pedalling all day. I don’t know why it has taken so long to ride 54 miles. I arrive at the awesomely magnificent cathedral just in time for Evensong. There’s a well-practised boys’ choir tonight, singing beautifully in the best tradition of cathedral evensongs.

But I can’t stand up when I’m supposed to. The long wet day has exhausted me.

Sergei, the Ukrainian refugee verger, sorts me out, and it’s such a beautiful place to play that the tiredness is almost forgotten. I like these evening performances, when there’s a proper sit-down audience, and few people passing through. There’s no distraction, and I’m almost lost in it.

There’s an important, and surprise, visitor, whose presence perks me up hugely, and afterwards I stand in awe of Barbara – who looks almost as old as me – who has recently completed a walk around the 42 cathedrals. Yes, really; a walk.