Game Over - A Family Affair - CycleBlaze

June 28, 2017

Game Over

back to Dave's car by train

It is exactly as predicted. Rain falls lightly but surely outside. The forecast says it’ll be like this for a few days. It’s game over as far as touring around Cornwall is concerned. 

The bikes are stored securely in the hotel’s ground floor parking area.  We go collect them, humping the panniers down a flight of stairs and out into the damp air. 

My back tyre is as flat as it is possible to be.

A couple of hotel workers come out of their workshop and ask about the trip while Dave looks for the key to his bulky bike lock. He can’t find it. 

In the end I ask the workers if they have bolt-croppers and one of them digs around in the workshop and pulls a pair about 18” long out of a drawer. They seem worn out and a few tries at cutting through the thick cable just leaves a dent in the plastic coating. 

He then fishes out a disc cutter and plugs it in, covering the bikes with a protective sheet. Sparks fly and within 10 seconds the cable is in two.

Dave's lock getting cut off
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I ask about a nearby place for breakfast and one of the workers suggests a café nearby. It’s a new place two blocks away. He says the food is good, so we call Ruby and tell her to meet us there.

Drizzle wafts along the seafront as we walk the bikes towards the train station, which is just a 10 or 15 minutes away. My rear wheel rumbles along, making a squishy sound as the rubber wobbles over the surface. A passing cyclist tells me it’s flat, as if we didn’t know. Pillock.

We find the cafe. The bikes get lent against a wall opposite so we can see them clearly while we eat. The menu is a bit fancy and not your usual fried fare.  I settle on home-made cereal with yogurt, which costs four and a half quid. Dave chooses American pancakes. When Ruby arrives, she doesn’t think the children will appreciate any of the choices and leaves without eating.

The cyclist who told us my back tyre is flat is also at the train station. He repeats what he said and I say something sarcastic to the pillock.

It’s just over 30 quid each for train tickets east to Totnes. I’d researched train routes as a Plan B and this is the nearest station to where the car is parked. The small town is just south of the camp site we first stayed at and there are a few special steam trains each day running there.  Hopefully we can get one.

We're soon on board at Penzance station. It's then a case of looking out the window as the train travels along the rails, with rain leaving steaks against the glass.

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On the second leg to Totnes, a woman cyclist on the train tells me there’s a bike shop at the back of the station and once we’re off, Dave rides there to buy a bike pump so that I can have a go at cycling again.

As Debbie and I walk towards the rear of the station, where the steam train station is, I spot a car tyre workshop, so ask one of the guys to inflate my flat with the pneumatic hose. Bingo. It seems to stay up and as we cross back over the road, Dave turns up with a new mini pump. It cost him 20 quid.

There are four steam trains a day from Totnes to Buckfastleigh and we can get one in the early afternoon. It’s just over a tenner each for the short trip.

The old station is decked out in period paraphernalia and we wait in a café across the tracks and enjoy cappuccinos and chocolate brownies. The rain isn’t too bad. It’s just a fine drizzle that you can’t really see.

The vintage carriage is the kind I recall as a youngster. There’s a corridor along one side with sliding doors to half a dozen compartments. The seats are sprung and covered in a thick velvet-type fabric. Steam and smoke billows past us as we trundle slowly along.

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It's drizzling when we get off and we decide to ask about rooms in the place we ate the first night. It’s just a couple of minutes from Buckfastleigh’s old-fashioned station. 

The guy behind the bar at the Abbey Inn says they’re full. It would have been nice to see my ex again and have a few beers, but we decide to get back to the camp site, load up the car and hit the road. It’ll be take at least five hours to drive back north to Dave’s house and it’ll be getting on for midnight when we arrive.

We pull up Dave's on drive before 11:00. 

Today's ride: 6 km (4 miles)
Total: 291 km (181 miles)

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