The Worcester apartment was great, even from my bed on the couch. Really nice to be in the olde part of town with real Tudor buildings mixed with everything to now.

But all good things end.

The ride from there was not an epic. It was a saga with lofty goals and ambitions for a manageable 63 km and 740 m of climbing. Plans shredded like a flag in the storm.

Let’s start with the lovely canal path of tourism lore. It is lovely, but less so when it is overgrown, slippery with rain with a wall on one side and a slide into the canal on the other.

I raced ahead revelling in these treacherous conditions but lost the bunch. No worries, I’ll go onto the bridge over the canal and wait for their grumbling voices to alert me to their arrival. The passed me by without grumbling or in fact any noise. Took us an hour and multiple phone calls to get back together at Droitwich.

Onwards through the prettiest industrial estate I have ever seen with neat flower beds of azaleas, juniper etc to a very nice beef, cheese and chutney sandwich at a cafe in Bewdley. Only 28 km to go.

Up some hills, along Sustrans route 45 to the promised Eden of the Severn River Valley. Nice leafy ride down.

The it went to potting clay. Literally. The Sustrans route disappeared into a jungle of stinging nettles, blackberry and worse with a surface of slick wet clay.

General agreement not to go there. Only way out was up a steep, slick, wet rail service access road, behind a farmers barns (with private collection of old chaff cutters as farmers do), turn left at the private caravan park and out through the farmer’s front yard and up to the road. Exhausting. Nevertheless only 18 miles to go. Over rolling hills to Bridgwater, wrong way over the bridge so back again and up another route decreasing from road to path to where the heck now?

Luckily a local cyclist in Lycra resplendent came past and press ganged by Jane into leading us the 17 km to Ironbridge. Glyn did a great job, thanks Glyn. Only one steep hill, a few not so steep ones and a smattering of rain later Glyn waved us goodbye at the actual iron bridge.

Google said ‘take the stairs beside the bridge abutment to ‘The Old Boat Shed’. The stars looked like a drainage sluice, completely unsuitable for carrying bikes down. Anyway the booking for the Boat Shed gave an address which turned out to be a closed pub. The phone number belonged to another BnB whose confused owner had never heard of our booking or us. Not looking good in the light rain and gathering dusk chaps.

John, Christine and Hillary gave up and left to go over the iron bridge to see john’s mate Stuart who had driven up from Kidderminster for a pint.

Jane stood sentry by my bike outside the closed pub and I went off on a last quest for the Old Boat Shed. This time past the iron bridge, down a private fisherman’s path to the riverside, under the bridge, past the family backyard BBQ and there was The Little Boatshed.