Cycling with great expectations

I have spent more time on the Internet than is healthy this last week, and no, I have not been blogging every minute of the day! I have been selling bikes on E-Bay. It felt like the more I checked the bidding then the more likely it was that I would have my reserves met. Obviously this is totally irrational, but you get the picture.

These are not the bikes I have been selling, but this is where it all started. While staying with friends on their farm in rural France, we borrowed their bikes. We had a wonderful time cycling around the local countryside where one could ride all afternoon (see picture) and meet nothing more than a farm tractor on the road.

We so loved this that when we arrived home we bought 2 new bikes (our old ones having rusted in the shed!) Something in our brains must have shut down as we did not take into account the busyness of our outer London roads. Added to this, we live on a hill so riding too and from our home was always taxing. No matter, we would take our bikes to the coast and cycle along the flat Thames Estuary promenades and riverside. We did this a few times and then my husband developed a trapped nerve in his spine. No cycling for a while. He then underwent surgery for a hernia and just as that had healed, he had to undergo a further repair, brought on by lifting our bikes onto the the car rack. Not what we envisaged. So I am afraid that was the end of our new and short lived cycling adventures.

So the upside is that, not only do we have a slightly higher bank balance, we have room in our shed which is a great compensation for Alan.