Today we would make a distance of round about 60-70km, which was most of the time following former railway lines. The first destination was Radstock, which was surrounded by green fields with old oak trees and pheasants jumping out of the brown ferns and shrubbery. More and more autumn colours appeared in the leaves.
From Radstock on we followed the Wellow Brook. Just before the name-giving village Wellow we were asked by a nice young lady if we were willing to take part in a research they were doing for the National Cycle Network. We followed her questionnaire step by step, and gave her some comments on how difficult it sometimes can be to pass with our big luggage through some barriers on the bike trails. We complimented her on the great bike path, not knowing that we would still experience major obstacles in Wales.
We must have lost our National Cycle Network flow a little bit, because in the village of Wellow we missed the railway path itself and took instead of following the river Willow Brook the wrong trail up the hill to where the second flush of rape showed yellow fields for the last time of the year. After a little detour we joined the valley again to be back on our “railway track” so not to miss the tunnels, which would connect us directly with Bath. The Combe Down tunnel was 1.6km long and the Devonshire tunnel another 400m. They were all part of the closed Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway Line and had a gradient of 1 in 50 letting us roll relaxedly into the valley of Bath.
It must have been due to the beginning of a new semester that the students were brought to Bath on a Saturday by their parents, helping them with their first student digs or simply just go shopping with them. The city was full of people and cars. We were not used to that anymore, after being in pure nature on our bikes. We were a bit hungry and thinking of getting something to eat, when a sudden rain shower made everyone flee inside and there was no chance to get a table. We finally found a table outside under an umbrella right by our bikes and got us some lunch. On the photo we got from us eating I discovered everyone else in the street did the same thing and had a full mouth.
One of the posh girls at the neighbouring table was not even touching her food, and after they left someone else took the table and it would have been thrown away. I couldn’t let that happen and just asked if it would be okay to grab the sandwich before it ended in the bin. It was probably not due to anorexia that she didn’t eat it, but more a matter of disrespect, that shocked me the most.
We kept on biking through the beautiful city of Bath, discovering its Victorian architecture or those little British things like a cash dispenser in a former telephone booth. Down by the river Avon (which is another one, because it simply means “river” in old English) where houseboats had moored we had a coffee at the “Bijou Bike Shop” and got us some warming reflecting bike gloves before we returned to the railway tracks.
At the Avon riverside railway station we were surprised by a historic train under full steam, and when it started to roll I tried to catch up with my bike, but no chance. I was completely sweating and steaming myself when reaching the train at the following Bitton station, where many historic trains were standing around. It just brought some magic nostalgy of being in England in Harry Potter country, where one can jump on the train on platform 9 ¾, but that’s for later.
The railway tracks were leading us in a long curve into the heart of Bristol, but as we still wanted to see another attraction we changed to the other side of the Avon once more at a skaters park under a bridge, where the air was so charged with the smoke of weed that the little kids playing on their bikes must have been seeing more colours than those of the graffiti. The riverbed of the Avon was completely empty due to low tide and showed its muddy brown side. From there we had to bike uphill to get to the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge. Back on the Bristol side again we biked through typical Victorian quarters to finally reach our friends David and Peri. From their house we walked to an area with many restaurants and had a very nice dinner outside.
