Sunset from the old Railway Line into Bedford.

Wednesday

A bit of a restless night - cramps in various muscles when I stretched my legs. Very uncomfortable. Breakfast the same as yesterday, filled a gap without being tremendous. We stripped the bunks, repacked our panniers and retrieved our bikes from the bike shed.

Ian wanted to follow a cycle route which used the same route as one of the the new bus tramways. So, despite the fact that we were heading for Milton Keynes, which is south west of Cambridge, we headed north. He had warned us that today was the longest ride. How prophetic was that!

Riding was good initially. The route was well signposted and kept us away from the main roads and the journey between Cambridge and Huntingdon was lovely - following rivers and passing between small lakes, through nature reservers and farmland. All nice and flat and we stopped at a pub for a pint.

We were being joined by Ray and Colin, who were going to cycle with us for a couple of days. Ray was going to meet us at the youth hostel in Milton Keynes and the idea was that we met Colin in Bedford. So at about half past twelve, we stopped for a pint while Ian phoned them and arranged to meet. We finished the pint and carried on.

We began heading south towards Grafham Water and St Neots. Stopped at Grafham Water, where I took a few pictures and then carried on and that's when things started to go wrong. At half past one, Ian rang Colin, who had arrived at Bedford, but we hadn't even reached St Neots. While we were following the cycle route, we took a wrong turning and ended up face to face with the A1. It was either turn right onto it, or go back a few miles and try to pick up the cycle route again. We decided to go on the A1 to St Neots.

It was like crossing a motorway. Cars and lorries were barrelling along at sixty and seventy miles per hour in two lanes on each carriageway. Fortunately there was a refuge, so we only had to cross two lanes at a time. We waited for a big gap and off we went. If my wife knew what we were doing, I'm sure she wouldn't be letting me go on any more cycling holidays!

We got into St Neots, and when we turned off the road, there was a sign which said 'Cambridge 18 miles' By this time, we'd done forty two!!!! It was now about half past four. We had a cup of tea in the park and after that, picked up the cycle route again. Unfortunately, it just took us in a big circle around the park. We left it and went through St Neots, but couldn't seem to find a way which didn't involve going on the A1 again. Eventually we asked someone and got back on the smaller roads.

We'd just gone over the A1 and were about half a mile from a village when I got a puncture. We took the tube out to repair it, but it was so noisy we couldn't hear the leak. I replaced it, pumped it up and headed for the next village as quickly as possible. I just made it to a shop which was still open and they gave us a bucket of water to locate the hole in the inner tube. We fixed that and set off again.

It was now about six o'clock and we still had a long way to go to Bedford, let alone the seventeen miles after that to get to Milton Keynes. Colin had been waiting for a couple of hours at this point. We carried on (still not having had any lunch or tea!) and eventually, just as dusk was falling, hit an old railway line which would take us into Bedford.

It got darker and darker as we cycled along it, and every now and again we cycled through a cloud of midges which felt like a short, sharp rain shower. I had my glasses on, but how the other two managed, I don't know.

Ray had been waiting at the youth hostel for about three hours and Colin in Bedford for the same time. We finally arrived in Bedford utterly exhausted at about ten o'clock. We met Colin at a hotel and as we only had two rear lights and one faltering front one between the four of us, decided it wouldn't be sensible to try and ride the rest of the way - even had we been capable of it!

We discussed chaining the bikes up somewhere, getting a taxi and then coming back for the bikes in the morning, but Colin went into the hotel and somehow charmed the receptionist (to whom we are forever grateful!) to phone a taxi, and she found one who would take the bikes and the four of us to Milton Keynes for forty pounds. This was great value as I'm sure we'd have paid double that, had we been asked.

At last we arrived at the Youth Hostel. It was now eleven o'clock. There was one final problem - we were staying in a dormitory and there were five other people fast asleep whom we had to disturb by putting the main light on and making up our beds. We were very apologetic and hopefully they understood. It was wonderful to get into bed - we'd covered fifty four miles and had nothing to eat since breakfast apart from a piece of cake at St Neots. And we never saw the bus tramway. I'm sure this holiday was supposed to be a pleasurable experience!