The hotel I had booked in Bridgnorth was about the cheapest room I could find when I was getting my accommodation organised for the Liverpool adventure. Slightly lacking in energy having completed another long day in the saddle I pushed the door open and walked into the carpeted lobby area to be greeted by the owner of the hotel (or maybe he was the manager?) who was on the reception desk.
To my left was an elderly gentleman sat in an armchair in the reception area watching the tv. The news appeared to be on at the time and the headline blaring out was about Buckingham Palace announcing that the Queen had been taken ill.
With this backdrop of a loud telly behind me the owner / manager proceeded to book me into the hotel, take payment and proceed to tell me at great length how to use the key to open the door. In fairness to him he had no idea that I was exhausted and very little key related detail was sticking in my brain.
With bags and key in hand I then proceeded upstairs to find my room (again I may have been given extensive details of how to find room 16, but I didn't remember that either), but after a little walk along a panelled walled corridor I found my room.
By chance I had booked one of the smallest hotel rooms you can have outside of a major Japanese city, with a single bed, lovely little bathroom and no windows to the outside world. The last feature wasn't that big a deal given the rain, but did make me think that I might have been given a key to a store cupboard rather than an actual bedroom!
After a quick bath and freshen up I decided that I needed to find some food which I already knew would involve a walk into the town of Bridgnorth as the hotel only had a bar.....and as good a meal as pub snacks in the form of peanuts might be, they weren't going to solve my calorie deficit for the day.
After several attempts I managed to lock my bedroom / cupboard door and retraced my steps along the brightly patterned carpet, downstairs to the reception. The bath had woken me up slightly and as I walked close to the reception desk, where the owner / manager checked if his key advice had been helpful I had no choice but to overhear the news on the telly behind me, with the elderly resident still sat in the armchair close by. Very sadly the announcer told me that the Queen had passed away, and whilst that was sad news I'm sorry to say that my first thought on processing this news was that there was every chance that all the pubs and shops in the town might close as a result of the queen passing!!!
With my room key tucked away safely in my jeans pocket I ventured out of the hotel and into town. Spoiler alert if you have not visited the fair town of Bridgnorth - the main shopping street is at the top of a very steep hill, complete with cobbled streets, quite possibly the last physical challenge my poor legs needed at the end of two days of cycling. The rain had also continued to pour so my ascent up to the town centre was wet, slippery and pretty miserable in fairness, soon made worse by the complete lack of options I was willing to take in terms of food options.
Tesco Express (or maybe it was a Metro, they look similar) came to my partial rescue with sandwiches, crisps and an assortment of sweet snacks to help me gain nourishment, and a few minutes later I was back trying to unlock my bedroom / cupboard door to get in, get dry once again and enjoy my dinner. It was not quite at the same level as the previous nights dinner courtesy of Marco Pierre White, but I had very few options and all I knew was that I needed food.
My evening telly choices were limited; every UK tv channel was talking about the news about the late Queen, so I turned it off, spoke to Jan for a day two debrief and decided that an early nights sleep might be the best idea.
As with day one the volume of liquid I had consumed to replenish my body (water / coca cola products ) meant I had another night broken by the need for a middle of the night pee, but the cupboard / bedroom was pretty comfortable and in the slightly odd circumstances I did manage to get some rest, if not the perfect nutritional recharge my body needed.
Breakfast the next day, situated in a beautiful panelled room with excellent service from the hotel staff did set me up for another day in the saddle, and in fairness I could still walk which felt like an important gauge of my recovery from days one and two.
Bike loaded up with bags once again, satnav and Buble plugged back in and I headed off on the last leg of this particular adventure, and whilst the ground and roads were puddled in places from the nights rain I was pleased to be guided onto the first section of the ride; another old railway line which had become a cycle path.
In fact these first few miles of day three were amazing. Level surfaces, lots of wildlife including an escaped goat and I soon got into the routine in the saddle. So far one of my biggest fears, my lack of experience recovering from the distance I had cycled didn't appear to be a big factor. My legs did feel a little heavier, and I know my average speed had reduced from day one into day two, and again into day three, but I was still able to pedal and this last day was the shortest of the three in terms of distance.
However my trust in satnav and her buddy Buble were pushed to the limit as she guided me firstly into a private driveway, having earlier guided me onto a path which hadn't seen anyone using it all year, and in my annoyance at having to double back (and quite possibly my general state of tiredness) I allowed myself to be distracted by a large model of a Spitfire plane situated in the front garden of a bungalow.
I hit the kerb to my left, and to avoid tumbling into the front garden with the aforementioned Spitfire model (which was about 2 metres across its wingspan and pretty impressive) I stuck out my left leg to steady myself. The good news was that my left leg stopped me falling off my bike; the bad news was that the impact of me, my bike and luggage was taken by my left knee in the incident and I felt a very instant sharp pain.
After a little more pedalling I decided to stop, check how far I had ridden and therefore how far I still had to go and have a think about what I was going to do next. Keep going through the knee related pain barrier all the way to Liverpool or consider a call to my wife Jan, who was driving up to meet me in Liverpool to come and pick me up. For reasons of probably having no one else to chat to or blame satnav and Buble were taking the brunt of my pain and frustration at this point too, especially when I realised that I have over 58 miles to go until I got to my destination.
"Bloody satnav" I muttered to myself as I swallowed a couple of ibuprofen, nibbled a protein energy bar and made my decision. Should I continue the adventure through the pain barrier ?