Underwater cycling?

Archie went off with Robert this morning. Robert has been away on a walking holiday doing St Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose to Lindisfarne. (62.5 miles) He was quite envious of our relaxing cruise (as he sat through several dozen holiday photos…)

JR went to the gym, then when Archie left, I did too. But I really wasn’t in the mood today, only managing 20 minutes on the cross trainer. Funny how some days I’m keener than others…

However, I was distracted from the pain by gazing into the pool area, where I noticed a man walking on water in the diving pool. I didn’t have my specs, which I really need now for distance, but on further scrutiny, I realised he was pushing a bicycle. And there was no water in the diving pool.  In fact, there was no diving pool! The floor was up level with the sides. Then he pushed another one. He was setting the bikes out for the water cycling class! I’d always wondered how they got the bikes in the pool!

Then, having lined the bikes up in serried ranks, he went and pressed a button, and a couple of minutes later, the water covered the bikes and the cyclists got in and swam to their bikes. Actually, I must have a look at those underwater cycling classes. I wonder if I could do them. Would it be easier or harder to cycle in water?

When I had done a couple of minutes on the bike, I happened to check the bus times, and oh, look - 8 minutes, plenty of time to get to the bus stop. And so I came home, having used up about 105 calories. Not very good.

In the afternoon, Louise and her wee daughter popped round for a visit. She and her husband had a couple of years in Melbourne, which unfortunately coincided with the pandemic and they spent much of it in lockdown. But they still loved it. She too was subjected to enjoyed the holiday photos on the television.

Archie is rather wary of small noisy people, but he came into the room, and actually stayed in, instead of hiving off to the kitchen to hide. He was looking longingly at the wee visitor’s big soft whale toy…

We’ve just booked Archie in for a couple of nights with a new sitter - we’d like to have a few people we can call on so that we can nip off for wee breaks, because Derek is almost always fully booked. We even took the precaution of (tentatively) booking him for our cruise next August!