Ride Home

I decided to ride home at the end of our holiday. I knew there was a possibility of rain and almost certain to be punching into a head wind for most of the trip. The idea of taking detours to boost the miles was not attractive today. Possibly affected by ploughing through big deep puddles early on my gears seemed to be playing up.
A bacon roll and coffee at the Antlers Cafe was a welocome break. 
A little after Newtonmore I decided to stop and do a road side adjustment on the front mech. The high stop had moved so the chain was rubbing on the front mech. I also noticed that the rain and puddles had washed all the chain lubricant off too. A van stopped and the driver stepped out and asked if I needed a hand. In truth my multitool wasn't quite long enough to access the adjustment screw so I was struggling a bit.. The man was a military mechanic by profession and his van was a fully equipped workshop. I said it needed a 2mm allen key,, no problem. He stepped in and fixed it in seconds. As I knew he would, he also commented about the lack of lube on the chain and he offered me some to get going. By this time I had phoned Mrs SJR (already ahead of me) and she had stashed my oil under a roadside pallet about 7 miles on. I was so grateful for his help and learned that I really need to carry a full length 2 mm key in future. As always seems to be the case it turned out we had near mutual acquaintances. I got going again and shortly afterwards located the oil Mrs SJR had left for me. The photo is the pitstop to re oil the chain and to have a banana. After this the rain lightened a bit and I got rid of the dreadful over trousers I had been wearing. The loss of restrictive clothing, oiled chain and banana fuel had a huge benefit and I had one further stop for oatcakes at the concrete bridge 12 miles from home.

Only 88km,  with that headwind it felt like 800. After getting showered and  changed I consumed cup after cup of tea, partly for thirst and mostly to get heat back in my body.