The clean, soft, freshly laundered air, all warming up and pollen-filled. April showers might bring forth may flowers, but they also bring forth mud and insects. So I spent an hour or so de-dead bugging the bike, and cleaning off all the dirt splatters, getting into all the little nooks and crannies with soap, cloth and polish, checking for rust and pitting, trying to take a good 2 years off the bike’s apparent age.
Once all was shining and clean, of course I went riding. On country roads liable to contain insects and mud. But I’d heard about a pub called the Grumpy Mole, not far off the A25 near Dorking, and with a name like that, how could I not try it?
The staff aren’t grumpy, I’ll give them that, and the food is good. But these country pubs seem to be obsessed with gravelled parking, and on a bike, that’s skid central.
At least the Grumpy Mole’s parking is fairly flat. I had to do gravel on an incline when I was still on L-plates, and the experience left me unenthusiastic for any kind of repeat.
