As you probably know, we never reached Moffat. We left Penrith, keeping a high speed on the road to Carlisle, stopping only in Plumpton to post some of the maps we’ve finished with back to Oxford. We enter Carlisle, and stop outside the station for a banana and toilet stop just after eleven. We cycle another mile or so through the city, 18 miles into the day, when Al is hit by a car, who went right through the back of him as Al waited to enter a roundabout.
The driver has accepted total responsibility for the incident, so I won’t dwell on it. By 2 o’clock Al has been released from the hospital, having been x-rayed and told he has escaped with just bad bruising at the base of his spine. He has been given a lot of pain killers, and more for the coming weeks.
It’s clear we’re not going to be able to cycle to Moffat today – even if Al can get his bike fixed, and is up to cycling (which I wasn’t convinced of by any means), the pain killers he has taken have left him unsafe to ride today. A fact attested to by his constant giggling… After a somewhat fraught discussion, we agree that we should call my parents, who are holidaying in Onich, outside Fort William, and ask if we can stay with them for a couple of days. We were due to stop with them for the night in Onich, so in three day’s time, if Al’s feeling up to cycling, we can carry on from there.
We find a hotel that can take us in Carlisle, and spend a miserable night there, trying not to dwell on what’s happened, and largely not succeeding.
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