Our average speed rarely exceeded 11mph. But my brother and I didn't care. We hadn't come to break any speed records or to develop our collective muscle tone, but to fill our lungs with perfumed spring air and to savour the English countryside coming to life after its last, miserable year. We were spending a long weekend cycling through Wiltshire, Avon and Gloucestershire, while spring sprung, lambs gambolled and beer gardens beckoned all around us
Only once did my cycle computer register a top speed of more than 25mph - and that was, if I recall the occasion properly, when I raced down a Gloucestershire hill ringing my bell frantically and shouting at a bunch of joggers: "I'm out of control, out of control! Get out of the way or you will die!"
For the rest of the journey, we were plodders, riding two abreast, chatting about nothing in particular and wondering if there would be a nice pub round the next corner. Usually, there was. True, we went more slowly because we were weighed down by panniers but, in any event, we were in no hurry to get anywhere. I had come from London and my brother from Birmingham, both longing for a bit of peace and quiet and to breath air not filled with exhaust fumes.
We were cycling along superb traffic-free routes and quiet country lanes that form part of an 8,000-mile national cycle route devised by Sustrans, the charity supported by the Millennium Fund. The gradients were negligible, the off-road sections easily manageable, the apple blossom dangling and fragrant - everything was delightful apart from the terrible clanking from my bottom bracket that started just outside Chippenham on Friday lunchtime. Helpfully, it gave us a good excuse to stop for a drink. After pints at a canal-side pub in Bradford-on-Avon, we went to a bike shop and bought the relevant lubricant, before rolling along the bucolic Kennet and Avon canal into Bath.
That was one of the best things about the route we had chosen: at every turn bike shops were open and ready to pump up our tyres, grease our bearings and do lots of other things that sound like double entendres, but aren't. One of the worst things, though, was that - in common with most cycling tours in Britain - it was hard to eat interestingly or even healthily. Lunches at rustic boozers are all very well now and again, but Neil and I quickly tired of meals that came invariably with chips and a horrible salad consisting of limp iceberg lettuce, a single tomato wedge and a few rings of red onion.
At Bath, after an astute dinner of pasta (good food for cyclists, according to my brother), we went back to our B&B to lay our weary limbs down for the night. But we were woken at 4am by some travelling rugby fans trying to kick in doors to get into their rooms. This was irritating enough, but breakfast was worse. We had assumed that the rugby fans would be too drunk to make breakfast, but we were wrong. "Welcome to hell!" shouted the man in a rugby shirt, shorts and sun hat as he came into the breakfast room.
These disturbances made us grouchy as we cycled from Bath to Bristol along a former railway track. We took against the whimsical public sculptures of metal passengers standing on disused platforms awaiting trains that would never arrive and we said very nasty things about Sustrans when we got lost near a large sewage works, although it wasn't their fault.
And when Neil produced from his panniers two tins of those new coffees that (some how) warm up if you push a button on the bottom, we didn't care for their taste.
After a while, though, we cheered up. Our quiet Saturday morning route was filled with tolling bells, bleating sheep and a host of daffodils. We pedalled oblivious of the fact that we were in the middle of built-up Bristol, such was the enfolding greenery around us. We crossed through the city centre with little trouble, thanks to Sustrans' route, and soon found ourselves splashing each other with mud as we rode out of town through the Avon Gorge Nature Reserve path and under the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
This ride turned out to be an unwitting homage to bridges - those cathedrals of the industrial age. No sooner had we left the Avon path than we were in the shadow of the mighty M5 bridge over the river. Soon the route hoisted us up on to the bridge's cycle path and, out of breath, we stopped. A six-lane roar to the left of us, a dizzying view to the right: the good thing about being on a bike rather than in a car on these bridges is that you can stop on them and stare. We did this repeatedly: later that day we crossed the Severn Suspension Bridge on the M48 and stood for a while, swaying as articulated lorries passed, and looking at England on one side and Wales on the other, both in mist. And then we looked the other way to the M48 bridge's brother, the M4 striding across the lower part of the estuary. Car drivers don't have access to such wonderful views.
That night we were unlucky with our accommodation again. The pub in Chepstow rang me on my mobile to say they had overbooked and had put us up in Marilyn's B&B nearby. Marilyn turned out to be a delightful woman who had thrown open the doors of her house to us only in extremis. It was her husband's birthday and she had not planned to have guests, but in our case she would make an exception. She asked us if we would mind having some dinner at the pub and returning before 8.45pm so that they could turn on the burglar alarm and lock us in while they went out to celebrate.
In normal circumstances we would have objected. But that night we were so tired that it seemed a good idea. And so there we were, two thirtysomething men with all Saturday night before us, locked in a suburban Chepstow house like dirty shut-ins while children played in the street. But we were soon and soundly asleep: country air and 100 miles of cycling under out belts did for that.
Sunday was a mad scamper from Chepstow to Gloucester to make the 2.30pm train. My thighs really hurt and there was a terrible pain in my left shoulder brought on, I feel sure, by the fact that I only had one pannier rather than two to balance the load. If Neil was suffering, too, he manfully kept his woe to himself. Still, this was a lovely ride. Back over the Severn Bridge and along some obligingly flat countryside, through quiet villages we rode.
At Berkeley, I slugged down a yard of pop and shoved down a Mars bar. We were hurrying now, or at least relatively: our average speed passed the all-important 12mph barrier. There wasn't time to visit the Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. We had a train to catch. Instead, we pelted along the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal towpath, and then through a series of pretty villages and lanes that are not strangers to cow pats.
We had a terrible time of it going along the busy dual carriageways of Gloucester on the way to the station. Bloody Sustrans, I thought. But now, looking at the map, I see that there is a very helpful route to the station that I didn't notice at the right moment. It didn't matter too much: having stowed our mighty metal steeds in the guard's van, we rode back to London with memories of the English countryside coming to life again. I fell asleep, tired but happy: we'd been welcomed to hell, but managed to escape into something much more heavenly.
Way to go
Getting there: The Severn and Thames Sustrans route can be accessed from many rail stations including Chippenham, Bradford-on-Avon, Bath Spa, Bristol Temple Meads, Chepstow and Gloucester.
Further information: South West Tourism (0870 442 0830 www.westcountrynow.com ) has lists of accommodation. The cycle map can be ordered from the Sustrans Shop (0117 9290888, sustransshop.co.uk) for £5.99 plus p&p.
