Problems come in threes

I planned my weekend meticulously. I had been riding further and further on the bicycle each evening, but the rides were just local loops of a few miles. I started to feel the need to go somewhere, and so I decided to visit the East Somerset Railway at Cranmore. The 5-day forecast said Saturday would be cloudy and wet, but Sunday would be sunny. I planned for a Sunday visit. The round trip would be 42 miles. On Thursday the 5-day forecast had changed, Saturday would be the sunny day now, and Sunday would be cloudy and wet, so on Friday I worked on the bike throughout the day, until I could get all three front chainwheels selected. In the evening I sorted out food, tools, petrol for the stove, and charged up all the camera batteries.

At seven the next morning the sky looked suspiciously grey, and along the line I could see what I took to be mist, but hoped it was the signs of a hot day to come. I set out on my antiquated-looking bike, carrying baggage for the first time in years, 20 or so pounds of it in two panniers. I reached Mere and passed through it easily, and started the continual climb up the B-road towards Stourhead, after which I would branch off to a little side road out of the traffic.

I stopped in a layby because the wild flowers in the hedgerows caught my eye.



This is Elderflower



And this is it just emerging. Later in the year the same sprig will be a cluster of tiny dark berries, the elderberry from which wine is made.



Bindweed, or Convulvulus, is a real nuisance at home on the platform, but it has the beautiful white flowers which the bees love. I just wish I could find a use for it myself.



This, I believe, is how a blackberry starts out.



Even Stinging Nettles can put out something pleasant and enticing.



And under the shade of the trees the Foxgloves were out in full flower.



And heading back out of the undergrowth to the roadside, the bike sits there, sixty seconds from catastrophe, without a hint of what is about to go wrong.

I was going to brew up a cup of coffee, but decided I'd rather do that away from the rush of the traffic. I hopped on the bike and set off again up the steady slope towards the turning to Stourhead. The bike suddenly slowed and almost stopped. I stuck my left foot on the earthy bank beside the tarmac and twisted to look back at the rear wheel, expecting to find a bag or a strap tangled in the spokes, but it was clear. I looked at the front wheel, and noticed that the wires leading from the hub dynamo were twisted. With a sinking feeling I got off and stood the bike on the centre stand. The hub dynamo had spun round and tightened up into a solid block. The wheel was immovable. I unbolted the wheel and took it out of the forks, and realised after about five minutes that I was going to have to dismantle it completely to allow the wheel to turn, and I didn't want to do that right beside a three foot earth bank with traffic shooting past me only inches away.

Fifty yards up the road was another layby, on the opposite side. I picked up the front wheel and the toolbag and ran up the road, left them on the grassy edge, then went back and picked up the bike by the handlebars and wheeled it like a heavily-laden unicycle over the road and up into the layby. This wasn't quite the idyllic morning I had forseen, and as I fiddled with the locked-up wheel I could sense that there was something missing, something I really had to have in order to be able to solve this problem. I needed coffee.

I got the petrol stove out from the pannier, used the old Echinacea bottle dropper I had found the night before to fill the priming bowl with petrol, used my flint and steel to set light to it, and got the saucepan ready. I started to pour water from the old blue plastic drinking bottle that had been on the lesbian bike. It wasn't pouring very fast, so I squeezed the bottle slightly. It split, showering water over the stove, washing the burning fuel out of the priming bowl and putting it out. I poured what was left of the water into the saucepan, and relit the stove.

While I waited for the coffee to brew I had a closer look at the hub. As I crouched over it my glasses kept slipping off and falling to the ground. It didn't help that I was sweating heavily either, and that both lenses were covered with large droplets. I realised, after dismantling the magnet and stator, that something else had bent, the wheel was now turning, but wobbling from side to side. I drank my coffee, and considered my options. The bike could not be ridden; the wheel was lurching from side to side as it ground around, making horrible noises as the rubber of the tyre chaffed against the mudguard stays and pannier frames, but more importantly, whatever was bent was allowing the ball-bearings to pop free. I couldn't call home and ask little petal to come and collect me, because she was 50 miles away baby-sitting for her eldest daughter, who was away for a long weekend somewhere in Wales at a glen reputed to be haunted by fairies. I didn't have my wallet, so I had no credit card or AA card, although I suspect that they would have simply laughed if I had called them up and requested roadside assistance or recovery.

I realised that I was going to have to push the bike home, all 8 miles of it. I had thought momentarily of pushing it to Gillingham where there was a bike shop, but then realised that without money or credit cards I was going to have to go home anyway. So I packed up the stove, and started looking for my glasses. I found them by the back wheel, on the ground, where they had either fallen hard, or I had trodden on them, because the right lens was no longer in the frame, and they were these annoying types where the top of the frame is just a piece of ultra-thin wire under tension. It had snapped, and I had nothing with which to mend them.

It wasn't quite the disaster it might seem, because I am long-sighted. I only need glasses to see what is inside my arms' reach, such as the keyboard and screen on this computer, but it still counted as the third bad thing to happen, all within the space of half an hour.

I set off along the road, walking along with both hands pushing the handlebars, wincing at the awful noises coming from the front wheel.



Just before the road went under the A303 I stopped to photograph some blue flowers that caught my eye.

I turned off into an industrial estate at the entrance to Mere to see if my friend was open, hoping he might have a spare front wheel or feel inclined to put the bike in the back of his van and run me home, but his unit was closed. I carried on through Mere and out into the countryside, and when I judged I was about halfway home, stopped to cook an early brunch of couscous with an oxo cube and some chillie paste.



And of course some more coffee, this time without any further problems with water-bottles. The stove is twenty-one years old, and I admit to feeling some trepidation when I got it going again for the first time since I came back from my travels, but it hasn't exploded so far, and it always was a scary thing to use even when it was new.

About half an hour later, much closer to home, I stopped yet again for flowers. This is the advantage of not using a recovery service, you can treat the journey back as if it was all part of the outing, which in a way it was.





And so, at one o'clock, I reached home, hot and sweaty, and decided I needed a bath, never mind the fact that the water would only be lukewarm. On an impulse I stepped on the scales before getting in, and found I had lost three pounds in weight since the previous evening. I put that down to water loss, even though I had been drinking copiously.

As an afterword, I got dressed and drove over to the bike shop in Gillingham, and said I wanted a front wheel, nothing fancy, just a 27 inch rim. "We'll have to order that in for you," I was told, "that size has been obsolete for years."

I drove back to the dump, and looked through the small selection of mountain bikes, none of which had wheels that would be of any use to me, and then went down the the scrapyard near to the station, where I managed to find a front wheel that was only slightly rusty, but more importantly, turned freely without any hint of bearing problems. I was determined to ride up to Cranmore, and the five-day forecast had now changed again, Saturday was dull and cloudy, Sunday was once more the bright sunny day they had predicted earlier in the week, and Monday now promised thunderstorms.

This has not been as much of a bad day as I thought it might, I feel cheerful after having rescued myself from yet another sticky situation. It is the first serious piece of trouble I have ever experienced on a bicycle, because it actually stopped me from riding it, but I was still able to get home at a good walking pace, without having to carry anything on my shoulders, something I loathe. More satisfying to me was realising that I haven't lost that part of me that was so resourceful all those years ago. It is like opening the front door to find an old friend standing there you'd thought was dead.

And although I marked it down as a catastrophe, it could have been far worse. The wheel could have locked up when I was speeding down a hill, the petrol could have flared up and set light to the small bottle of priming fuel, I could actually have been unable to see without my glasses.