Cycling holidays

I can't remember whether or not I've already mentioned this, but in August Mum and I are off on a cycling holiday in Suffolk.

Naturally this has meant a great deal of preparation - making sure that my bike was fit for purpose, doing a few bike rides to get myself prepared and buying some panniers. (after a great deal of research and reading other people's reviews I eventually settled on Arkel - a Canadian firm that sell very robust panniers).

We've also done most of the travel preparation, i.e. booked the Bed and Breakfasts and roughly planned our route; although I still need to do a few more bike rides, but the weather has been putting me off lately!

Anyway, the main purpose of this particular post is to say that we were getting a bit worried that Mum wouldn't even have a bike to ride on! Clearly, the one requirement of a cycling holiday is that you have a bicycle!! Mum had applied to get some money through the bike to work scheme; only it was taking rather longer than expected to arrive.

The voucher finally arrived yesterday and so Mum went and got her bike and after a few hiccups with the saddle and the gears, took it out on a short ride today. Mum's first ride on her lovely new land rover bike (which is purple!) and what does she do? She falls off!! Would you believe that she was stationary too!!! (sorry Mum, this was too good to keep quiet!).

Mum tells me that she overbalanced a little and when she went to put her foot down the ground sloped away a little and so she just missed altogether and fell over! Ending up with a muddy brake lever and a bruised knee - sending kisses your way, but you really shouldn't fall off your bike!