Pedal Power

I went for another sea swim this morning, and Alan came down to the beach with me, it was really nice as our beach isn't touristy, so it wasn't very busy.  The sea was a bit more choppy today though, so swimming was quite hard. 

Then this afternoon we went out on the bikes and cycled almost 14 miles up some very steep hills to Northease.  The plan was to go to our local vineyard 'Breaky Bottom', and have a picnic, but we never thought to put my bike on charge and we still had about one mile to go, and the computer was telling me that I only had 6 miles left on Turbo which I was going to need for the hills on our return journey.  So we decided to stop where we were and have our picnic, and we'll save Breaky Bottom for another day.

We had one very long, steep hill from Rodmell to Telescombe village and this is Alan just as he'd reached the top.  Unlike me, he has to use pedal power and only just recovering for his flu bug, he did very well.  Whereas, I just switched my bike to turbo and up I went, mind you it was so steep it still took some effort, but there's no way I could have attempted it on a normal bike.

Our ride had a bit of a disastrous end though, and just before reaching home I fell off into a huge nettle bush!   I don't know what happened as it happened so quickly, but we came through the fields and down the hill at the side of our house, Alan was in front of me and had already gone through the little pathway out onto the road, so he didn't see it happen, he just heard my screams!  As I turned to go down the path I just started to fall to the left and there was no way I could steady myself or hold onto anything, and landed on my back on a bed of nettles - at least it was a soft landing!  I shouted for Alan to come and help me, as I didn't want to move for fear of getting stung any worse than I had been already - my tee shirt had rolled up my back so I was lay on the nettles and have been stung right across my back and on the back of my legs.  Anyway, he helped me up and as soon as I got home I got in the shower to rinse anything off.  

I've covered the stings in Aloe Vera and they're still burning, but it's calming down - think I'd better go and put my feet up and have a glass of wine!