And they still made it to the Rising Sun with enough time to down two beers before I did. Then again, they didn’t have to sneak along the side of an aircraft hangar and across a churned-up field in the pitch dark, locate a bicycle without walking into a tree trunk more than once and then push it without lights through a forest transplanted from Transylvania, before discovering that the gears no longer worked properly, at least not uphill. This country living was going to be the death of me. Eight hours without a car and I was getting withdrawal symptoms, so much so I began to urge Dan’s boneshaker on by shouting at it, christening it ‘Cold Turkey’. And because I was high on adrenalin from the fear of being seen, filthy from falling over so many times scrambling across the hop fields, and in agony as every tendon in my legs twanged as I pedalled, cars began to pick on me. I hadn’t seen a car on the road all night, but suddenly, when I was most vulnerable, it was rush hour.
