From Russia With Love

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So....the elephant in the room....life on the road in the 'new normal'.  It's a bit rubbish.  We have experienced the full range of covid protection measures, from 'laminate a few signs and put out some hand sanitzer' to 'assume that Vladimir Putin is trying to kill you with Novichok'.

At the Novichock end of the spectrum was Detta, our Dutch landlady in Armadale.  She met us in the car park with our disinfected room key held out at arms length in a wooden box.  We let ourselves in and met her in the no man's land between our part of the house and hers.  This doorway had a newly fitted perspex screen, behind which she read out Ze Rules (there were many) designed to thwart the best trained Spetsnaz assassin.  Breakfast (pre-ordered) was delivered to our side of the house through a hatch and we handed back our full slopping out bucket through the same hatch (ok, the bucket bit is made up).  As we left Detta was putting on her hazmat suit and preparing the DDT sprayer.

We are getting used to fishing out a mask before entering every shop, pub and hotel lobby but we are not at all keen on the new breakfast regime where everything is delivered to your table by the waiter.  As any cyclist knows, the buffet breakfast is the greatest thing known to man and out ability to extract maximum value from an inclusive breakfast is severely hampered by the new system.  

Today the dynamic duo parted company.  Our destination could be reached by two routes, one being 27 miles and a sodding great hill more than the other.  I did the obvious and sane thing.....Plum went over the sodding great hill.  As a result of my good sense I am sitting in the pub writing this while Plum is still slogging away on the SGH.  

The big news of the day, and this is going to knock your socks off, is that I don't have anything to complain about.  There was no wind, it didn't rain, the route was lovely, the hills were minimal and the midges even forgot to come out.  Couple all this with the knowledge that Plum is probably half way up a 5 mile 8 percent climb and things couldn't be better.

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