Excuse the late post...

Large quantities of strong dark ale proved to
be my downfall at a beer festival in Manchester

I've been a bit busy of late, travelling to different parts of the UK, getting a little over-the-top drunk on one occasion and, of course, I've been in the dog house at home as a result. Anyway, things have blown over and now I've got a little time to discuss last week's cycling.

Andy and I went down to Hunger's End in Merstham on Saturday of last week, that was November 6th, and then on November 7th we headed on down to Woodmansterne, a destination we haven't visited for a long time. We met Jon there, which was good, as we hadn't seen him for a while.

Andy near Merstham taking a photo of me taking
a photo of him.

For some reason we got chatting about prison, probably something to do with my drunken antics on 29 October when I attended a beer festival and, how can I put this, I had one too many and lost control of things. I rarely get drunk these days and the whole situation was rather embarrassing – you know the score, you drink too much, you kind of go on to automatic pilot and can't remember how you got home, what you said to people on the way, that sort of thing.

When I reached home in the early hours, I must have sobered up, but I had to sleep in the spare room and you know that horrible feeling when you open your eyes, think everything is fine and then you remember? It was like that. I felt okay, a bit weary, perhaps, but I didn't have a hangover and I spent most of Saturday trying to avoid any embarassing conversation with the missus. The whole incident has put me off drinking for a while and I'm now trying my best not to drink throughout November.

This picture sums up the season here in England at
the moment. In other words, it's the autumn.

During the drunken journey home from the North, I managed to text Andy to abort the cycling as there was no way that I'd have been fit enough to get on the bike and then on the Sunday (October 31, Halloween) I think it was raining. The worst thing about the Saturday was that the weather was fine, making it all the more irritating that I'd allowed myself to get into such a state and then not be able to go. On the Sunday, got half way up Church Way when Andy called and said it was pissing down over in Caterham and then, of course, it started to rain where I was in Sanderstead, so I turned round and went home, but that was the Halloween weekend. Last week it was Merstham and Woodmansterne and it was good fun on both days.

The St Helier Arms, Carshalton. It's not there any more.

The reason we were talking about prison was something to do with me being drunk on the 29th. We moved to discuss people we knew from our school days who had since 'done time' and that moved us on to various 'faces' from the past and some dodgy, high profile criminal types currently residing in prison. From there we started talking about a notorious pub in Carshalton called the St Helier Arms, a pub that has since been knocked down but was one of those places where you couldn't avoid trouble if you made the foolish decision to go in for a beer.

Dad's not been well, which is always a little worrying, but he's on the mend now, thank God, so generally speaking, things are good. Cycling tomorrow, of course, and probably Merstham and Hunger's End and then a shorter run on Sunday – weather permitting – but I think we'll escape a soaking this weekend.