Day 6, Tuesday 6 September

Thurston to Cambridge

Having again cooked porridge on my camping stove, which Mike declined to enjoy with me, we packed up and rode into Bury St Edmunds. We found a very nice cafe in the centre of Bury and sat outside, and I think I remember having eggs benedict. Next to us two ladies were seated enjoying their morning coffee and we got into conversation. One of them said she only lived down the street and if we were going to be in Bury for some time we could pop in for a cup of tea later in the day. She looked at us very meaningfully, but her friend leant over and said, “Ah, but note that she has not told you how far down the street…”. We all laughed.

On we cycled until we got to Moulton where there is an extraordinary pack horse bridge high and dry in the middle of the street with the road going straight passed it. Clearly in the 14th or 15th century, when it is thought the bridge was built, the River Kennett had been much deeper and the ford would sometimes be impassible. The pack horse trains carrying valuable cloth and other merchandise on the trade route between Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge had to be kept dry. The expense of building the bridge is a testament to just how valuable the trade was.

We got to Newmarket mid afternoon and stopped at another nice cafe but there were no other customers so we were forced to strike up a conversation with the tea lady, which didn’t have quite the same frisson. We were now half way to Cambridge where we were due to catch a train back to Birmingham, so we pushed on. There is a very good cycle path leading into Cambridge but unfortunately it is plagued by tree roots. Bouncing over one I dislodged a pannier without realising it had dropped off until a van driver pulled up alongside me and called out. Golly, that was lucky: I’d have arrived at the station blissfully unaware that some miles back, heaven knows where, I’d lost a pannier.

We had booked spaces for our bikes on the train but there was quite a melee of cyclists on the platform and we only just managed to get on board with all our heavy kit. Thereafter it was a matter of sitting back and enjoying the ride home. We cycled through the city centre together using quite good cycle paths to where we had met up a week earlier and then Mike set off for his final seven miles home. I only had to cycle up my road for another few hundred yards.