Saturday

Danielle took Rowan on the train to Sheffield for her first day at the Regional Academy – all a bit anxious about it I think. I take the train to London to go to the Cycle show at Earls Court. I have been on and off for the past 20 years at various London venues, and before that, long ago, at Harrogate. Truth be told this year's show is a little tawdry. Plenty of good stands with interesting stuff on them [cycle rack solutions, the London bike scheme, cycle holidays, Condor cycles where my bespoke tourer came from etc] but not quite as good as previous years.

I walked up to Kings Cross from Earls Court listening to The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Terence Ratigan and very good it was too.

The train journey back was fantastic. I noticed that is was scheduled for 3hr 20 instead of 2hrs so assumed a route change because of engineering work. That was the case. So from Peterborough we went off piste across the fens via Spalding and Sleaford to Lincoln and Gainsborough, re-gaining the main route at Doncaster. I had the OS 50:000 map up on-line on the wi-fi, so could follow the route in comfort – perfect. I just got the feeling that not everyone on the train felt so good about the delay.