Travel Days 20 and 21 - Cirencester

I'm so fortunate to have good friends Steve and Sarah here in Cirecester and so appreciate their hospitality. After being on the road for around 70 days living out of two 8 kg dry bags and eating at a variety of cafes/bakeries/restaurants and the odd kind of homemade meal from what I can buy at the local supermarket its so nice to be back in "normal" family home, to have "normal" family meals and do "normal" family things. All of which are getting ticks for here.

What is not normal is not riding the bike and instead going for a walk through the rolling hills right here on the doorstep of Steve and Sarah's home both yesterday and today. Quite different to walking at home in that here the Public Footpaths, The Byways, The Restrited Byways and the Permissive Access paths all allow you to walk through farmers fields, sometimes the track goes diagnoally through the field which maybe meadow or a wheat crop. Not all of them allow cycles and/or horses.

I lovely walk will take in farm fields, villages, lanes, pubs and churches and views of the rolling English Countryside. Yesterday's walk took us through the huge (as in several thousand hectares) Bathurst Estate that runs from the town of Cirencester well out for several km's. We passed by the polo fields where some of the chaps were returning from a spot of practice by the look of it. In recent years the polo fields (private they are) have been extended and it looked like in the extension there were at least another two very well prepared and groomed fields. Steve tells me that this was where King Charles II would come to play polo back in the day. I guess he's got a bit much on his plate now to allow time off for a little bit of action riding.

So far on this ride I've seen five wild deer - two in Europe and three here in England and today I managed a pic of them however as they were about 200 metres away the pic has lost a lot of its resolution.Today's deer took quite some time to exit the scene as it wasn't until they got wind of us (our scent) that they realised we were in the same field.

I haven't seen very much livestock grazing or in housed barns and I'm told that the numbers have reduced substantially in recent years. At the same time I heard for the first time the use of the agricultural term "Horsieculture" - yes in many instances the wealthy folk have purchased the farms and now they are used for their horses.

The lanes can be as narrow as 6' (six foot or 1.8 metres) accordning to the road signs and at one point today i was standing side on hard up against the fence and could feel the left hand wing mirror of the mini brush past the seat of my pants! fortunately they were not travelling at speed or any closer to the left hand side of the lane.






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