Crab & Winkle

Last week, someone put one of the much coveted Interception travel bugs in a cache near Canterbury that is part of a series of three. The caches are on National Cycle Route 1, which runs between Canterbury and Whitstable and is close to the route of the world first passenger railway line - known as the Crab & Winkle Line. The cache setters recommend hiring biks in Canterbury in order to do the cache series on two wheels and today was the first day we had the opportunity to give it a go, as the cycle hire place is closed on Mondays. Luckily, cachers in Kent don't seem to be as on the ball as they are in some other parts of the country, so the bug was still there today for the taking. As an extra bonus there were two other caches on the route that we hadn't already found.

Now, I am possibly the worlds most incompetant cyclist - I'm not too fit, I hate going too fast and I can't be guaranteed to ride in a straight line, even when I should. And it's been well over a year since I last rode a bike. Bearing this in mind, we did quite well to get almost as far as Whitstable today, and we would have done if we didn't have to get the bikes back to Canterbury before the hire place closed. We reckon we rode 6 miles each way, which I managed without falling off or crashing into any other cyclists, and I felt quite good when we were done. Seeing as I was tired, sweaty and dusty, had a sore bottom, had gained a new bruise on my leg to go with the two I got last week and was pretty mucky from helping Adam change one of the inner tubes that came down with a puncture, it seems a bit weird that I felt good, but I did.

Anyway, apart from the puncture, we enjoyed the ride through some lovely countryside. I meant to take some photos for the blog but I clean forgot. Oh, except the ones I took whilst we were looking for a cache on the University of Kent campus.



Students, eh?