To Westerham...22 miles

Sunday, 13th April 2014: When I woke up on Saturday morning and remembered that Andy wasn't going cycling, I decided not to get out of bed and instead fell back to sleep, re-awakening around 0800hrs. Once up and about and having eaten breakfast I thought I'd go out to Botley Hill and back but alas, I didn't go. Sadder still, I got as far as the garage door before remembering something my dad once said to me when I was moaning about the futility of gardening. He said that my garden was my gymnasium, a green gym no less and that all the exercise I needed was out there waiting for me.

Churchill's statue in Westerham and beautiful blue skies.

Knowing me, I probably said something along the lines of swimming or cycling or even walking was probably better exercise than mowing the lawn, but now, as I stood in front of the garage door, ready to retrieve my bike and head off into the sunset, his words came flooding back to me and the key came out of the garage door lock. I stood there for a few minutes and then decided to mow the lawn instead. It was, of course, a wonderful day and I missed out on what would have been a pleasant ride. And there were so many other options on the table too: I could have cycled to Woodmansterne Green to meet Jon or I could have cycled to mum's, met Jon and had breakfast there before cycling back. But no, I decided to mow the lawn instead.

Andy on the green at Westerham, Sunday 13 April 2014.

Sunday was my only real opportunity to redeem myself. I left the house at 0630hrs and met Andy on the green at 0700hrs. We opted for a ride to Westerham and headed off along the 269 in the sunshine. It was another lovely day and there's nothing better than sitting on the green on a sunny Sunday morning, drinking tea and munching cereal bars whilst chatting about this and that.

Yours truly on the green at Westerham, Sunday 13 April 2014.

Around 0830hrs we jumped back on the bikes and headed out of town and up the long, laborious hill, which wasn't that bad as we talked about conspiracy theories surrounding the whole notion of climate change. This came about because of an interview I'd conducted during the week in Brussels, or rather the week before last, when I discussed climate policy and how it was driving foundation industries out of Europe (steel, petrochemicals and cement – and probably others too). We both wondered why anybody would want to decimate European industry and concluded that it could only be some kind of plot by some kind of mysterious power elite that we're all sort of aware of but are both too gullible and too apathetic to do anything about. We discussed the gullible masses that believe everything they read in the newspapers and how the aforementioned 'power elite' could easily get anything past any of us and we wondered what stories there were in the national press that could easily be malignant, underhand concoctions.

I was thinking of the Malaysian flight MH370. I mean, seriously, we're supposed to have God knows how many early warning systems in orbit around the planet to stop rogue nations launching missile attacks, but we can't seem to find a huge jet carrying 239 passengers. In my opinion, there's something amiss. Somebody is covering something up and until they can find a reasonable excuse as to why the plane has 'disappeared', it won't be found. Once they've thought of something plausible, the plane will be found and we're getting close to that day now – I'm guessing. Just think about it for one moment: a huge jet carrying 239 people has mysteriously disappeared for weeks, not days. But if a missile was winding its way towards London or New York or Paris or any major Western city, it would be picked up by some kind of early warning system – and yet a plane (many times larger than a missile) has just vanished. No, there's got to be more to it, somebody's messed up, but whatever it is we'll never know, we'll be fed some bullshit and we'll believe it because we're all as gullible as hell and quite happy to believe whatever the media wants us to believe. The likely truth is that the plane was shot down by somebody, I don't know, but let's wait and see.

Climate change is another one: we're all being told stuff by 'scientists' and we're all believing it because of a bit of freak weather here and there, but somewhere there's some kind of agenda. 'Climate change' has been invented for a reason, but what is it? Who knows? But the very thought of relying upon solar energy and renewables to run huge steel mills and petrochemical plants is just ridiculous – and yet the world cannot exist without the products produced by these industries. What it does mean is that these industries will relocate to areas where they don't care so much about carbon emissions – and that will mean job losses and so on in the Western world. Something's afoot – it always is – but we'll never know the truth.

We both rode to the Green and then said our goodbyes. I'm off work for a week (on leave) so I'm going to try to get a ride in every day of the week. It's a tall order, but let's see how it goes.