Monday 29th July

I awoke at 7.30 and left the campsite by 10.15. I set the GPS to Bala, arrived there and rode through the quite pretty High Street, took a left past the lake and rode a lovely shady road around the far side of the lake, back into Bala in an elongated circle. I found a cafe there and ordered eggs Benedict and a tea. I sat outside to eat. When the eggs came they were swimming in mayonnaise which looked disgusting but I managed to avoid most of it. (I have just looked up the recipe and mayonnaise is a standard ingredient.) Then I took one more lap and parked briefly at a spot behind the lake where some people were sitting around it on the ground. It reminded me of Ruislip Lido in the 1970s but this place had its own little narrow gauge railway station. The weather was getting warm. Then I pursued a mixture of small and major roads towards this site, Offa’s Dyke Farm Campsite.

About a mile before you get here you have to ride up a very steep and very narrow road then more lanes before turning right, through the sheep on the road, into a field. On entry I was struck by the cows mooing loudly and the complete lack of shade against the now fierce sun beating down. The view, through, is beautiful. The facilities are I suppose very basic, masquerading (I wrote) as ‘wild camping’. And cos on three sides – one calf ‘escaped’ into the site and a second seems to be calling for its mother. At that point I began to wonder about this site and whether I’d go home after one night here but resolved to see what the evening would be like.

I put up the tent with not a lot of enthusiasm and went off to find Tesco Superstore in a nearby town. Of course a key road to get there was closed so my journey was hugely roundabout with many false turns all in the heat. Finally there, I parked next to a couple in a 1970s VW camper van and I complimented them on it. I enjoyed a slow shop in the air-conditioning and bought more ice (useful later in an unanticipated way). 

On the return I decided to film (to follow – it just needs editing) my ride up the steep lane commenting that I wouldn’t know what to do if I met a car coming the other way and…. I did. To cut a long story short I tried to squeeze past but at the last moment stalled and dropped the bike and fell and felt immediately a lot of right sided pain when I hit the ground. Somehow with the help the the late middle aged female driver and her older passenger and large doses of shock and adrenaline, I managed to get the bike upright, still on a steep incline. I tried to move it in first gear with the engine but it was tricky and I stalled a few times and very nearly dropped it again. (I was trying to remember advice from a Plumb video about what to do if you stall uphill. Let go of all the controls and the bike will not go anywhere – if you are in gear which you would be.) A couple of cars came down but backed away pretty quickly. Once I managed to inch up to a not so steep part of the lane I managed to lean over enough to put down the side stand without the bike rolling back. I could climb on and then ride on up to the campsite. Once here, though, I must have been so shaken and distracted that I dropped it again on the grass (even though the film shows that the bike thought that the side stand was down).  This time I hurt too much to pick it up and decided to wait for one of the other campers to come to help. But a – I have to say quite beefy woman appeared from nowhere (I must have been lost in anxiety) and offered to help. She was the owner of a chopper type motorcycle parked over in a corner by a tent. She was very helpful in the best possible way, asking if I wanted to wait or to pick it up now. She could see I was frazzled and in a bit of shock. Together we lifted it up though unfortunately my GoPro ran out of battery just before recording us getting it upright. It turned out she was from Nunhead. 

I texted H, took some Brufen and held my bag of ice against my painful side and back for a while. This pain is very different to the muscular pain of my bizarre gardening accident injury. [I have just learned, six weeks later, that I did fracture rib number 10 on my right side – a displacement fracture. Its still painful though not nearly as much as in the first week after the fall.]

I’ve now had a couple of gin and orange drinks sans ice and will cook my chicken noodles and pad thai sauce. I wonder what my night will be like with this pain.

The farmer has just come by. There are three of us on the site, a solitary man in a car and large tent, the woman with the Honda who was on her way home from a women’s motorcycle event in Wales and me. Now there is a forth – a young guy walking the Offa’s Dyke way with a predictably very small tent. All of us are in solitude in our own worlds sitting looking out over this beautiful and peaceful vista. The walker told me he had motorcycled and cycled but now is walking. I thought – would it be ‘resilient’ to give up biking after one small off and start a new path of walking?