A Week-end in the Cotswolds by Ron Trill

In 1947 there was a hard winter lasting from the end of January until early March. Sometime during this spell the cold north-east wind got at my left knee, causing a certain amount of pain, but this disappeared during the milder weather of March. Meanwhile, I had booked to stay over Easter at a farm at Bledington, south-east of Stow on the Wold in the Cotswolds. This was to be my first tour after the war and was greatly looked forward to. It was not until March that I received confirmation of my booking, my landlady having been to a wedding and became snowed up!

Come the day, the Good Friday, there was a roaring wind from the north, and the odd fleck of snow, so I spent the day pushing into it, thereby doing my knee no good at all. However, the pain was only slight and did not stop any cycling for the rest of the holiday. On my arrival, at what was obviously a very full house, I was asked to share my room, (which was a loft covering most of the top of the farmhouse), with another cyclist and a German prisoner of war who, I was assured, would give no trouble at all.

In fact, we rarely saw him. In due course, that is a couple of hours later, the cyclist turned up and proved to be a Mr. R.A.G. Marples, (of whom we have all heard). It was the very first time that I had met him. He had picked out the farm at Bledington because his friends from, I think, the Bedfordshire D.A. were staying in the village. Not that he seemed to mix with them much.

Grev thought that perhaps we should ride together, to which suggestion, (not knowing him as well as I did shortly afterwards), I agreed. We spent the next couple of days pottering around the Cotswolds, visiting such places as the Broadway Tower, Snowshill (where there was a considerable amount of snow left over from the hard winter), the Roman villa at Chedworth and the wonderful Coln valley to Bibury, which has been my favourite Cotswold valley ever since.

Among his various peculiarities, Grev insisted on taking a cold bath every morning. On the first morning, I heard the water running for the bath. Presently I heard the landlady's voice: “Who's running off all my hot water?“, and a rather thin voice in reply: “I am running a cold bath.“ There the matter seemed to rest.

So we progressed to the last day and the ride home. Grev had lost his map-measurer and suspected that he had left it at the place at Bibury where we had had tea the previous day. He would therefore ride back that way in the hope of retrieving it, a detour which would add considerable mileage to a long ride home. At least that was my excuse for going my own way. So I set off into the teeth of a strong south-westerly. After a few miles I felt a twinge in my knee and after a few more miles it became more than a twinge. So much so that at Lechlade I got the map out and found a railway station at Faringdon, about six miles to the east. It would be a complicated journey home from there but it would have to do.

At Faringdon, before checking on trains, I had a good, if pricey, meal at the local hotel. On leaving the hotel, a miracle occurred. All pain had gone from my knee. Still swollen it might be, but quite comfortable. So I forgot about the train journey home and took a route over the Downs, turning left at Shrivenham and surfacing at Colingbourne Ducis, rather late at something to six, where I discovered the Sally Lunn Tea Rooms (long since closed). There then followed a great and glorious afternoon, through many hitherto unknown villages and countryside generally. The wind had dropped considerably and I was even offered an egg for tea, a rarity in those days.

On the way home, somewhere between Salisbury and Downton, it became dark and my dynamo could not be made to work properly, giving just a glimmer. Then it started to rain. At Downton, a special constable became interested in my front light, but eventually, after some argument, I was allowed to proceed, provided my cape was tucked up so as not to obscure what little light there was; the headlamp, for some reason, being on the upper bracket in front of the handlebars. Coming up to the Old Beams, south of Fordingbridge, with just three miles to go, I suddenly felt that I must eat, so I stopped for, I think, beans on toast. It was that sort of place in those days. It was about 10 p.m. when I arrived home. What a memorable day.

The whole week-end was in fact memorable. I have often wondered what time Grev reached home; he may have got ahead of me during the afternoon, but I doubt it!

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