I'm typing out this blog with my hands and arms covered in grease - a stain that all the power of cheap soap and a dilapidated wire scrubber can't remove. I'd like to believe it makes me look like a hardened cyclist but agree this is unlikely.
Since my rear skewer snapped yesterday morning I've been wrangling with my bike, which is starting to squeal and squeak, twitch and grind unnervingly. I'm worried that some crucial part will fail in the remote depths of the Scotland mountains, but having reliably carried me nearly 1000 miles so far I'm also holding out hope that it will survive another couple of hundred.
However, on arriving in Aberdeen we locked up our bikes and set out on foot to find our patient interviewees. Firstly, we foreswore wedding fever and took part in Royal Weeding Day, which led us to meet the friendly Kenny and help him out a little on his vegetable patch hidden behind a Chinese takeaway in Aberdeen. We then met Alan, who manages a community garden run on permaculture principles.
In fact, such was my faith in my bike's Chinese workmanship (and my technical skills) that this morning we took the bus to Drum Castle this morning to help put up that quintessentially British (but almost exclusively English) and quixotically phallic symbol of springtime awakening: a maypole. Perhaps the seven weeks spent looking at the world from a saddle have elevated a bus trip into an exciting adventure or maybe we've simply forgotten how to perform ordinary everyday tasks, but by the time we'd found the bus and got to the castle the pole had already been (for want of a better word) erected among the daffodils.
So I made the executive decision that on tomorrow's journey to Huntly we would pass by the castle's May Day celebrations in full swing, even though we have around 45 miles to cover as it is - what could possibly go wrong?
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