DAY 19: Bath to Alveston

Today: 23.4 miles
Total so far: 293.4 miles
Percentage Completed: 17.6%

(Click map to enlarge)

A good day: I find myself saying that a lot lately. I must be having a good time.

I wake up to cold northerly winds, and slushy rain slapping against the windows. I am tired, having spent too much time last night posting pictures to the blog (or perhaps too much time in the Porter).

Rach's scrambled eggs do their magic and I am ejected from her flat into the weather. I am not interested in the Cotswold Way this morning as it will be wet & miserable, so instead I opt for the Bristol & Bath Railway Path: Good Choice! I bowl along, and am soon safely tucked in a corner of an enthusiasts railway cafe scoffing lemon cake and coffee. I arrange to meet Pat (a friend of the Baron's) in Pucklechurch and bowl along happily.

The pub isn't marvellous when it comes to beer, and the one proper beer they do have doesn't tempt me, so I try the cider. Hmmm - an acquired taste perhaps? It doesn’t do food, so crisps are fine. 

Pat & Don are charming, good people and amazingly seem pleased to see me. We speak a lot of Derek (our mutual friend) and they press twenty pounds onto me for my charity. Pat is one of my silent readers who I am sure is taking pleasure from my achy feet! She's a good girl.

The afternoon is back on the planned route and I gobble up the miles until at last I am at My Cuz Helen's (& Alan's) and am soon sitting down to the biggest chicken pie and gravy I have ever seen in my life.

Then it's down to the Fox for a very welcome (last chance I am sure, this time) pint of Sharps Doom Bar.

Back home to a rollicking chat with Alan about modern management of education and the arcane procedures that teachers now have to wade through. The reasonable man on the Clapham Omnibus would have thrown himself off the top deck if he had to follow the modern teachers handbooks. My father would be turning in his grave if he hears what teachers have to go through now before they even are allowed to start to teach little Johnny.

It's education, Jim, but not as we knew it!