Day 13 - The wonders of the internet, combined with National Rail

Day 13 – The wonders of the internet, combined with National Rail

Cheshunt, Hertfordshire to Hitchin, Hertfordshire
29.24 miles

Well, the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that over the last couple of days it looks (according to my schedule) as if I have not been pulling my weight, distance-wise. I have to pull my weight on the bike otherwise I’d be leaving some of me behind! Ha Ha! In truth, you’d be right. I haven’t cycled quite as far as I had thought I would, but am I complaining? Heck no! I shall explain the reasons for the slight discrepancies.
When I designed the route originally, I used multimap to calculate the distances, and aimed ot use it as a rough outline of how far I’d be travelling each day. I’d put in point A to point B, via point C if necessary. This would then twirl it’s little cogs and come up with a distance. This is obviously not the actual distance that I will absolutely be cycling and therefore, with me using often quite small roads etc. the distances change. Therefore, the people (you know who you are) who have been moaning at me, there is the definitive answer!
(I hope that I need not point out that obviously if I have said 60 and it turns out to be 30, then that is a total error on my typing and not me bottling it!)
Anyway, onto today and this morning started with the not-quite-so-brilliant fact that the muscle that I had tweaked when falling on one of the many occasions on the first day (I believe it’s an inter-costal muscle – get me with my medical knowledge!) I made somewhat worse by…now wait for it…picking up some dirty washing from the floor. Yep, manly and effort-filled! So, oohhing and arrgghhing my way to the train station (I hope I don’t get accused of cheating here, y’all know my route) I managed to make it onto a very on-time and smooth train that I had to run for looking rather like a tri-athlete on a change over, pushing my bike along side. It worked like a dream. Thank you Liverpool St and the relevant services.
To balance the muscle downer, I (and my excellent house-mate Aaron [Andie, you’re excellent too, before you start to feel left out]) tinkered and tweaked (this time in a good way) the cables for my gearings and managed to get them working very smoothly. The internet is an amazing place for getting how-to facts on pretty much anything isn’t it! How I have managed to do without 3rd and 4th for the tour so far, I have no idea!
The cycle went very smoothly and I even managed to succeed in a day without rain! Amazing. I cruised into Hitchin soon after 4pm and am now about to enjoy an excellent roast dinner (Thank you very much Sarah, Anna, Clifton and Anita) and even managed to catch Cambridge winning the boat race! Fantastic.
You know what as well? I have company tomorrow! How genuinely exquisite! Sarah is joining me for a day to Oxford!
For one day at least, Cycle England becomes a two person conquest!