TTMFFTTM 4

It was another of those things that my father failed to tell me about, such as scanning the path at the bottom of the hill for indisposed farm animals before you actually descend.
The other Saturday having cracked a bleary eye and cursed at the weather ("Good! Bugger! Better do something then."), I hoist myself aloft, leafed wearily through my various biking trail leaflets and decide to head for "The Great North Way" in reality 32 Miles of National Cycle Route 12 ( and, amazingly, a nearly straight route; Sustrans, the people responsible for the National Cycle Routes, have managed to make the route between Birmingham and Oxford about 112 miles despite the fact that they are only 60 miles apart, hence, "amazingly") running from Letchworth in the "North" to Hadley Wood/Potter's Bar on the outskirts of London. It has several stations on the route to decamp to, plus one at either end, I made my final check by firing up the TV to check for the dread "Engineering Works" (a sort of mechanical plague that affects the British railway system, chiefly at weekends and during the holiday season. Trains are replaced with buses which have to drift tortuously over swathes of countryside before calling at all the stations that the train isn't, naturally they are full of the either extremely angry or semi-comatose, what they aren't full of is cyclists, as they don't take bikes), WAGN (the Company) was clear, I double checked, leaped into the saddle and pedalled for the station.
An hour later I detrained at Letchworth, carried my trusty steed up the stairs and ,after a brief perusal of the Engineering Works notice, began to roundly curse. The franchise for my particular length of track was now owned by First Capital Connect (some distance down the alphabet from WAGN), my route, which paralleled the main line, was bereft of trains from points south of five miles away, it was, in fact, also bereft of power lines. I decided that I should, at least, do some exercise and review the situation (plus the condition of my perineum and/or knees) at Stevenage where the branch line that was open, dived into the backwaters of rural Hertfordshire. Thus it was that I found myself on the Letchworth Greenway, a countryside access track circumnavigating Letchworth and uniting places of interest (including two power stations, Stotfold sewage works and Letchworth dump, it also offers several unparalleled views of the A1). However, I persevered and was rewarded with a lot of countryside, a good selection of butterflies plus several encounters with other flying insects ranging from the ballistic interaction of bumble bees to an ocular episode with some sort of long, small and, apparently sharp beetle (probably a staphylinid), the latter causing me to exit from the road stage left and weep profusely whilst waving on the somewhat baffled stream of traffic behind me.
By this time I had arrived on the outskirts of London (having succumbed to a fit of stupidity and a willing suspension of self-awareness in the Stevenage area) sadly with no real idea of where I was, however I spotted a view, pointed my front wheel in the direction of Canary Wharf (it's tall) and arrived home about an hour later, having done a few extra miles, well about 50 percent extra miles actually. Sunday dawned with pain, and hobbling.Moral: Keep abreast of changes of franchise in the National Rail System or your legs will ache.