When the kindness of strangers fuels the onward push
One of the major advantages of cycling is being able to go relatively long distances in order to visit tea rooms where you can enjoy homemade pies and cakes.
I remember visiting Vienna and being struck by their tearooms with their art Deco styling. Sitting at a table, one cannot help but be struck by their ability to recall the elegance and quietude of times past. English tearooms serve goodies equally good but with a different atmosphere. More like Morse than Poirot. They also unfortunately have the evanescence of butterflies.
When I still had muscles in my legs I would do a round trip of 180 kilometres eastward to the Royal Military Canal near Hythe in Kent. The canal and its surrounds have a pleasant atmosphere and the canal was built to stop Napoleon should he decide to invade Britain; it stands as a thirty-mile folly of military thinking and it is now home to a European invader. The invader is a large frog and on summer days can be heard and seen in the water. There are also birds so I tend to cycle carrying binoculars.
Anyhow, on this particular summer day, I changed my route slightly to cycle through Appledore. My usual stop was in Rye which at one time was on the sea but is now well inland. Very much like Hythe. In the village, I spotted a new tearoom and ever on the watch for new places I stopped for a refuel. After about 90 kilometres I am tired, hungry and thirsty. There is only one way to measure your state of hydration. Have you peed in the last two hours? If you have not, then take on fluid irrespective of how you feel.
I sit down, open the menu, and decide on rhubarb crumble, vanilla ice cream and a cafetiere of coffee for two. While waiting I check for my credit card. Not in any pocket, not in the saddle bag. Gone with the wind.
I find just over two pounds in cash. The woman in the shop asks whether I have a problem. I tell her my card has vanished but I have two pounds. What, I ask, can I get for two pounds? A cup of tea, she says. My jaw hits my knees. I still have at least 90 kilometres to go and a cup of tea would have the same effect as feeding King Kong a banana for lunch.
Have you come far, she asks. Nearly a hundred kilometres and another hundred to come, I tell her. She takes a long hard look at me and invites me in.
Sit down she says and disappears into the kitchen. A minute later a burly, bearded man comes out and also gives me the once over. I try to look as near as I can to an oldie cyclist on his last legs. The woman comes out with a large pot of tea and two slices of crumble. One for now, she says, and one for later. I eat and drink musing the while on the unexpected and unaccountable kindness of strangers. I leave.
About a year later I return, cycling the same route for the specific purpose of saying thank you and paying my respects. Alas, the tearoom is no more. They are no more, like apple-pan dowdy, which is an apple pie that exists only in America. What was the cafe is now a shop selling postcards that are supposed to be funny. Why, I wonder, did I not ask their names?
I can still recall their faces and they wander nameless in my brain through corridors that surpass material place. Apologies to Emily Dickinson.
Also published in Cycling Plus magazine
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