After I had seen Bosworth Field the last target was checked off the list. In 36 days and 1,200 miles on a bicycle I had seen the Lake District, Hadrian's Wall, Glasgow, Loch Lomond, Argyll, the Kintyre Peninsula, Ulster, the Cliffs of Moher, Killarney, Skibbereen, Cobh, Brittany, Mont. St. Michel, Normandy, the Bayeux Tapestry, Omaha Beach, St.Mere Eglise, Cherbourg, Poole, Avebury and Bosworth Field. Plus all the scenery in between.
All that was left now was about another 200 miles back to where I started, Blackpool, to hang out with my Brit cousins, their kids, and their grandchildren.
Wherever possible on this trip I had avoided urban areas. They are just too slow to navigate, the lodging is expensive, and if I ran into a pack of urban thugs, exposed and slow as I was on a bicycle, I could lose all my stuff. I will allow that last worry was prob'ly in part a result of my own urban childhood over there in the '60's.
Still, Bosworth lies sorta in the middle of England proper, and between me and Blackpool on the most direct route lay the Manchester metropolitan area, further west again, Liverpool. If I went north up the more level and flat east side of England I would have to get through or around Sheffield. So instead I aimed up the rural middle, planning a route through the scenic Peak District National Park, tho I knew the many hills would slow my progress. I was going to cross the Peak District south to north, thread my way north and west through the Pennines, and then turn west north of Manchester and Preston to get to Blackpool.
To get to the south end of the Peak District I had to get forty miles from Bosworth north and west to Ashbourne. I set out mid-afternoon.
Pretty fast progress by my standards, I was on the outskirts of Ashbourne by evening despite a slow and surreal three mile segment en route steered by my phone app along footpaths through weedy fields, and up abandoned driveways choked with brambles, past no trespassing signs and suprised unemployed louts smoking cigarettes, and then sliding the bike under a locked gate in Burton-on-Trent.
Back in the sticks again not far south of Ashbourne I had my closest call of the trip.
I was rolling downhill on a country lane barely wide enough for a single car, said lane hemmed in on each side by tall hedges.Ahead was a blind curve going right, all curves on that stretch being blind on account of the narrowness of the pavement and the tall hedges. Coming down that same lane somewhere behind me I could hear a big truck approaching at an unwise rate of speed.
I swept around the corner and there was a car, right there, coming the other way. Fortunately there was a wide spot on my side just then, on my left on the outside of the turn, right after the curve, giving access to two fields on the left.
One of them instant reaction deals; the lady in the car hit the brakes, I bailed off the pavement, and looking to escape the vicinity of the imminent head-on 'tween car and truck, bounced up a short grassy bank, across some rough grass and ended up right up on the two gates to the fields.
The milk tanker truck, for such it was, driven by a young Polish guy as it turned out, came around the turn going too fast, seen the car, hit the brakes and bounced up that same grassy bank, across that same rough grass, and ended up right next to me up on the gates, close to pinning me against them. I'm guessing the milk tank was empty, hence his high rate of speed to begin with and his subsequent rapid deceleration.
The British lady driving the car was all shocked and angry at the truck driver and said he almost killed me, from her angle it looked like he HAD killed me. The young Polish driver was shaken and apologetic. For me it was one of them almost-doesn't-count-except-in-horseshoes deals, over too quick to get worked up about. I expect it woulda looked scary on Youtube, but when all was said and done no harm no foul. After a little we all continued on our respective ways.
Thinking back on this just now I realize that, had he been hauling a load, or a bigger one than he was and had pulled that same evasive maneuver, he woulda swept wider, taken me out from behind and then crushed both gates. But..... didn't happen.
A short while later I came across this pub, the Shire Horse. Since I was only about a mile or so from the campground I was aiming for I stopped in for a pint.
Apart from working farms, the English countryside has gotten very gentrified, even modest old houses going for the better part of a million pounds. Nowhere is very far from a major metropolitan area with their associated moneyed professionals and successful entrepreneurs.
Many things have changed in England since my youth, but one thing that ain't is a sort of widespread snobbery and class consciousness among many moneyed professionals and successful entrepreneurs.
It was very much an urban moneyed crowd in the pub, not all of course were upper class twits but several seemed to be.
The flip side of that among this crowd is a remarkable innate restraint against complaining and a pained but passive tolerance of unwashed eccentrics passing through. One guy thought it would be funny if I camped under a horse chestnut tree across the road from the pub on a small patch of grassy public right-of-way, I could see the humor in that so I obliged. Plus the pub also had good food and free wifi.
Met some friendly people, had some good conversation, but later that night while crashed out in my tent I head a passing lady to her husband
"Oh, I don't think THAT is good at all!, why did they let him camp there!".
Actually, I expect I coulda camped out right on that lady's front lawn and she woulda been too polite to kick me off
...and, out of consideration for the Pub owner, I was gone at first light, left the place cleaner than I found it.
Birdwatcher