A quick weekend review – feeling the need to blow some fresh air through my mind, I kitted-up the bike and set off for Aberystwyth on Saturday morning; the round trip is some 400 miles, and provided a marvellous opportunity to shake-down the DRZ after it’s recent 4000-at-6000 mile service.

Route? For those who know the UK, Reading, Oxford, Chipping Norton / Rollright Stones, Evesham, Pershore, Worcester, Bromyard, Leominster, Rhayader, and (via the Mountain Road) Aberystwyth; having made an earlyish stop I pulled in at Fox’s Diner in Dorchester – a biker hangout – for a bacon and egg baguette, good biker soul food. Kept me going all day.

I made my usual swing past the Rollright Stones to see Dohn Prout (site curator) and Jane and to find out how the work to repair the vandalism is going. Apparently they are going to expeiment with getting a veterinarian in to visit the site, to experiment with ultrasonic tooth descaling equipment, to see how that fares at removal of the gloss paint, daubed over the stones earlier this year.

I stopped to spend a few minutes helping Jane and a couple of others who were picking through the grass around the King Stone, removing all the crystals, beads and other fetishes that less archaeologically-minded, more mindless folk choose to “sacrifice” to the stones.

To paraphrase how Jane puts it: The stones have been at Rollright for 5000+ years; no modern gemstone polished by child labour, piece of quartz or spar stripmined from Brazil, or cheap glass bauble will have the power to purify, cleanse or improve them in any way that can be conceived by the balanced mind.[1]

Not to mention: such things pollute the archaeological record.

40 minutes nitpicking the grass, bike, brrm brrm, and I get to Rhayader and took the Aberystwyth Mountain Road, via Cwmystwyth (amer: Coom-ist-Weth); this is a superb bike road, with almost a guarantee of NO CARAVANS/TRAILERS – but many many sheep. For a trailbike it feels almost A-road quality.[2]

Arrive in Aber, park up at the Belle Vue Royal, get my room – a twin room, with an enormous bathroom with three mirrors, this must be where they house the wedding parties – shower and hit the seafront, only four minutes (fashionably) late.

Meet up with Jim and go for a pint, and another, and then a Chinese; thence to see seafront to watch the sunset [found.pale.org] and the offie to pick up some beers, and then meet with Carl and Anna, and walk to the station to meet Jim’s lovely girlfriend-recently-fiancee, Catrin. I fork off with Carl and Anna in search of Felinfoel Double Dragon – which we eventually locate, at precisely the pub Anna first suggested trying – and then toddle over to J&C’s place to sync up, gossip about friends, vicariously envy photographs of Venetian holidays, etc.

Beer and Prosecco consumed, trundle out, buy and drink water, get back to the hotel (avoiding lagered and slappered tourists) around 0130h and crash out with a book. My next appointment is morning coffee…

…at the Clocktower Cafe the next morning (L-R: Anna, Catrin, Me, Carl), myself succumbing to the cheesecake with dreadful ease.

A walk down the prom to the harbour was sunny and pleasantly reminiscent, but all that was blown away by the half-hour water show put on by a school of wild porpoises that had gotten in to the harbour; persumably mummy and daddy porpoise were teaching baby-porpoise how to frolic, and the show was enjoyed by all.

The people were almost as entertaining – eg: the guy who got onto his surfboard on a perfectly flat, almost mirror-smooth sea, paddled out 200m offshore and turned the board around, waiting for nothing to happen for almost 10 minutes only to paddle back to the beach.

Catrin bought us all an ice-cream – I had Caramel Fudge – and I bade her and Jim farewell, kitted-up and met-up with Carl on his VFR750, whereupon we ran the mountain road backwards to Rhayader.

We had coffee and a bite, and I peeled off homewards.

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[1] thinks: would this imply a market for ethically-pure, fair trade, we might even say organic crystals? hmmmm…

[2] google provides a cyclist’s illustrated website of the general area at [www.offroadadventures-online.com]