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Apparently, it was somewhat of a male abode and the bar maid appeared used to being harassed and took it in good humour.  Not everyone would have been happy with the ‘banter’ was the boys view, but it is tricky to judge when you are only passing through.  With the sparky atmosphere, Ross was reluctant to ask for a fruity glass of Pinot and washed his curry down with a pint.

 

Then their breakfast was also slightly entertaining as they had to sit outside and wait for it to be served, on the plus side, the people who served it were lovely and not a grumpy old sourpuss like we had.  This was the landlord serving, having moved out of Glenn’s room so that he could stay there, although I am sure they had more than two rooms as Ross and Glenn were the only two staying there.  It almost feels like something out of Lewis Carroll.

 

Now, not bad weather to set off on, Glenn playing support and the girls just chilling at this stage ahead of their duty starting later in the day as Ross and Glenn were going to depart after the second stop at my cousin John’s house due to them wanting to get back and cast their votes in the referendum.

 

The early part of the ride was gently up and down, and on some pretty little roads. What we didn’t realise at this stage was that both support cars had managed to get lost.

 

For the girls, this didn’t really matter, all it did was interrupt their shopping a bit, but at least mum managed to get her swimming costume.  What they also started was the car singing.  Now there is some TV program with I think it is James someone singing along to music, but it isn’t a patch on Jenni and Ruth’s.  Today they sang along to Valerie, and videoed it as well and posted it to the Twitter account.  It may not quite have gone viral, but it did get a very good response.

 

Who knows what they will do next as they start a campaign on social media with the aim of spreading the ride further and wider.

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Glenn however had plotted a route down what he thought were fine roads, but kept coming across gates. Unfortunately, some of these gates were across the road and locked meaning that detours were needed and he was getting concerned that he may be late meeting up with the peleton.

 

However, the peleton were having problems of their own.

 

After a cracking descent coming into Stanford Bridge, we had to climb all the way back up.  As we started going up, we began seeing signs saying that the road ahead was going to be closed. 

 

Now, when you don’t know the road, it’s hard to know if you should pay attention or not.  In this case, when we got to a barrier across the road, it most definitely was something that would affect us as the road was clearly closed.

 

There was a barrier right across the road. There was not another road either to the left or right. The choices were, go through a closed road, or back down a seemingly larger hill now in memory and probably then back up again and not being quite sure if we were going to meet up with Glenn in the right place.

 

Then, we saw as we got closer, that the barrier was manned, or rather, boyed.

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We asked if it was possible to come through, he said not. It was completely closed, and to complicate matters further, the bosses were there today so he couldn’t possibly let us through.

 

There are different ways of addressing a problem.  Shout, rant and rave or smile and talk pleasantly to people.  I employed the second as by now I was fully engulfed by the philosophy of going with the flow and that included seeing what could be done about things that were in your way. 

 

After a bit of a chat, the young lad, who hadn’t been giving any positive signs as we offered to ride slowly, or walk through the tricky bits, suddenly declared that he was leaving the job tomorrow and that he couldn’t stop us anyway if we weren’t riding as the road closed only applied to vehicles and if we were walking we weren’t vehicles so he didn’t care if we went through, have a nice day fellows!

 

Unexpectedly finding ourselves the right side of the barrier we looked at each other, remounted the bikes and started riding.  Slowly at first, but then as there was no sign of any roadworks, more of a normal pace.  After a mile or so, we could see the work going on ahead so started slowing down.

 

Almost immediately, we were spotted and this jolly large man, lots of tattoos, short hair and muscles wanders out holding his arm straight out to indicate that it would be good for us to stop and discuss things with him.

 

We got off, and promptly redeployed the tactic of smiling, being polite and asking if we could walk through.  Our representative of road work officialdom went from ‘no chance mate’ to ‘ok, I’ll walk you through’ in the space of seconds. 

 

As we walked through with him, he explained that there were indeed lots of bosses there so he had to accompany us.  We were quite happy for him to do that as it did mean that we didn’t have to take that big detour after all.  It really cemented the approach to any problems, be nice, smile and at the end, always shake hands.

 

I shook hands and thanked him.  You don’t have to do that, but it is only polite, it shows gratitude for the favour he did us and you never know, it may make life easier for the next people coming through. Shame more don’t use this as an approach in life in general.

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It’s like the Kevin Spacey film, Pay it Forward.  In a nutshell, you don’t know when you will need a favour or for someone to be nice to you, so be nice to someone first, even if it costs you.  In this case, it cost us nothing and actually it did make us feel better at having turned what could have been confrontation into a friendly chat.

 

Wishing each other well and saying bye, we rode on to where we were due to meet Glenn.

 

No problems meeting, at least not for us.  This was when we found out about Glenn’s issues with gates and diversions.

 

Now, remember what I have just been saying about being nice to people and paying forward and all that, well, ashamed to say that we just laughed at Glenn’s misfortune.

 

But do not fear, karma would get me back.

 

In fact, shortly after swapping over, probably less than a mile down the road, karma struck.  More roadworks and closed roads.

 

Old hand at this now though and just slowly rode on and then dismounted at the right place and walked then got back on with a cheery wave to the people digging up the road. Not a problem at all.