Cycling to Berkhamsted

(More Pics of Cycling to Berkhamsted)

The Rex Cinema in Berkhamsted is COOL! Vicki, James and I cycled 32 miles up there to see "Sin City" on Saturday. The ground floor of the theatre is set up like a Las Vegas show lounge with beautiful little tables and red plush revolving chairs -- four per table. There's also a bar. We had a bottle of wine while we watched the show as well as some olives and cheese and crackers. And the tickets were £8 each!

We stayed in a rather boring but pleasant enough hotel at Bourne End near Berkhamsted called the Water Mill. The next day we cycled back up to Berkhamsted and checked out Berkhamsted Castle and then went up to Ashridge where I'd been on a training course from work.

It poured rain on us the entire time. Picture an Ocean; now drop it on your head; repeat indefinitely. James and Vicki opted to take the train back to London. However, I am in the middle of this crazy thing where I'm trying to see how quickly I can cycle the length of the Tour de France in order to raise money for the Red Cross, so I didn't feel I could wimp out quite as easily.

It's a good thing I had this bigger goal because I was relying on a borrowed pda and gps unit thing to find my way and the batteries died almost as soon as I left Berkhamsted. "No Big Deal," I thought to myself. "The important thing is to crank up the miles anyway. I'll just follow the signs."

Oh MY GOD, this was a BAD idea! Signs on B roads in England are extremely vague. There seems to be a rule that a particular town can only ever be on one sign and that sign must be some random distance and direction from the town. I got very lost. The good news is that it gave me an excuse to pop into a lovely pub called the Bricklayer's Arms somewhere near Sarrat. I didn't get a chance to have anything to drink there but I'd love to go back some time (if I can ever find it).

Eventually I made it to Watford where I bought an Ordnance Survey map and a pair of dry socks and then found my way to London from there. All told, that day I cycled 55 miles, almost all of it in pouring rain, and about 15 of it without having any idea where I was going.

Now that's dedication! Come on, cough up a couple of quid for the Red Cross!

The sad news is that today is the last day of the Tour de France. I'm afraid I didn't quite keep up. I've cycled just a hair under 700km since it began on July 2nd. The pros did 3608. But I'm going to keep at it. My sponsorship page runs out on November 3rd so that's my target date. The biggest obstacle is that the missus and I are off to Canada for three weeks in August. This might put a small crimp in my cycling schedule.

By the way, if you'd like to stop by and say Hi while we're there, Vicki and I have weekend passes for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Stop on by.