Soloist

It's officially autumn in the UK now, and the weather is correspondingly getting a touch nippy. I love this time of year - slippery leaves in the road notwithstanding. The weather's still dry enough to allow for regular rides, and cool enough not to have that 'boil-in-bag' effect you get in the height of summer, especially in traffic. 

I had a yen for a pub lunch (ah, Sunday roast dinners at good pubs....) so off I headed. 

I got to a favourite pub, which I know does a mean nut roast, parked up, ordered and sat at a nice little table out the front, where I could see my bike and enjoy the sun. 

As I was sitting there, sipping my coffee and waiting for my food, a man walked past on his way back from ordering at the bar. He looked at me and my neatly piled helmet and jacket, and said, "I can't believe you're on your bike on your tod."

Huh?

Is it that he thinks bikers only exist in packs?

Or is it, which is depressingly more likely, that I'm a woman, who rides an H-D FLS, and has absolutely no need of a man to do the driving or keep me company. 

To the pack theory: I do enjoy riding with friends, but essentially, as I've said before, riding is a solitary pursuit. It's you and the bike and the road, in a symbiosis that needs extend no further. Any group ride briefing will include the reminder that you are responsible for your own ride (both the experience and the vehicle). 

To the other: well, frankly? Get with the 21st century already.

Coffee Views

Recently, I took a different route from usual to get to the dealership from which my baby comes. This meant I wasn't aware of the roadworks and diversion that wound up taking me the very long way round (and incidentally ended up with me on my normal route anyway), but while having this runaround, I spotted a new cafe near Newlands Corner. I like Newlands corner for the view, but hate their coffee, so any new cafe in the same scenery is worth investigating. Even if there was a distinct lack of motorbikes in its parking lot. 

So I returned on the first available dry weekend, and discovered, firstly, that the Squirrel Tree Cafe will never be a biker haunt because the parking is gravel. This is hard to ride on, hard to park in and even worse to try and back a heavy bike out of afterwards because there is zero traction against which to push. Add a gradient, and that will be your workout for the week. 

But I wanted coffee fairly urgently, so I picked the least gravelly bit I could find and kept my fingers crossed.  
The cafe is nice, don't get me wrong. The coffee is good, the snacks are better than expected. There's a lack of bathrooms, but the place over the road (the one with bad coffee) has those. 
Also better parking from a two-wheeled point of view. So next time, I shall go to Newlands Corner, park on the paved side and then go get take-out coffee from over the road.