Tatsfield Village for tea and a cream bun

It was one of those 'was it even worth going?' moments when Andy pulled out two iced Belgian buns, but to hell with it, they were lovely, especially with a cup of warm Twinings English Breakfast tea – far better than the PG Tips we'd been drinking over the past few weeks.

Iced Belgian buns – lovely!

On arrival, our bus stop was dry and sunny and that put us immediately in the mood to help a troubled motorist by pushing her broken down car to the kerbside where later it was examined by a portly man in trainers (who definitely needed the exercise). When Andy brought out the buns, to complement his cereal bars, and I poured the tea, well, we would have been forgiven for thinking we'd died and gone to heaven.

Today, the main conversation was about prices and how everything is unnecessarily expensive. Tea at just under £2 a cup is ridiculous when you consider how much it costs to make and then there's double glazing and that moment when the salesman brings out his calculator and claims that it'll cost you something ridiculous, like, say, £15,000 but that if you sign on the dotted line you can have it for...sound of fingers on calculator keys...£2,000. How, you wonder, could something go down in price by £13,000? Answer: because it was never worth £15,000 in the first place. I'm exagerrating, but not by much. We live in a country where being ripped off is just part of the average day for most people – two quid to go one stop on a bus, £1.75 + for a cup of tea, a pack of five razors for over a tenner when it's cheaper to buy a new razor, it goes on and on.

In the end, of course, people think: sod that, I won't bother and then the Government moans about the economy being depressed because consumers ain't consumers. I wonder why? The worst thing, of course, is that the goods on offer are often pretty shoddy and not worth the money in the first place, but we all know that, don't we?

Mind you, those Belgian buns were worth every penny – and so was the Twinings English Breakfast tea.

6 & 7 March 2010 – to Merstham for breakfast!

Andy's bun – but as you know, precious grams mean nothing to us and what's a sticky bun among friends?

I think the phrase 'variety is the spice of life' is key in cycling, and now that we have a new default cycle route (to Merstham in Surrey) we've kind of moved on from Woodmansterne Green, which is now there as a quick route should we not have time for anything else. Having said that, of course, if we keep going to Merstham for breakfast at the Hunger's End cafe, then it's soon going to become boring and we'll start yearning for new destinations. The key, then, is variety.

Okay, on to this weekend. Saturday was a full house: Andy, Jon and yours truly; and we all headed off for Merstham and Hunger's End where Andy had a cream bun, I had scrambled eggs on toast and Jon had a smaller version of the Full English he had last week. We all had mugs of tea and I had two and then headed back home – Andy along the A23 and Jon and I through the quiet lanes that weave their way under the M25 and back towards Chipstead and Banstead.

The Merstham run is good because it's fairly long. All told, the trip covers 30 miles or thereabouts, so it's equivalent in work-out terms to our Chevening Lake route. Merstham is okay; a little eccentric, what with the shaving man, who is there EVERY Saturday. Apparently he likes watching Merstham FC, the local team. The women who run the caff all smoke, which is not good, but they're a friendly bunch and they can rustle up a decent breakfast. That, of course, is the great thing about cycling to Merstham. It's a long way and there's a nasty hill (from the bottom to the top of Hazlewood Lane) but that makes the notion of a big breakfast even more exciting. The problem is getting back off our arses, on the bikes and home again. To be honest, I could sit there all day drinking tea, watching the shaving man and chewing the fat with Andy and Jon. Still, you can't everything.

I was out late on Saturday night and didn't turn in until 1am in the morning so the prospect of a Sunday cycle was not good. Having said that, I did wake up around 0630 and wasn't feeling that tired, but I stuck with my abort message sent to Andy very early on Sunday morning. He didn't go cycling, but Jon called me from Woodmansterne Green. I felt a little envious as I stood in the conservatory chatting on the mobile as the sun shone brightly outside. And here I am now, Sunday morning, just gone 1030, the sun is shining and I'm still in my dressing gown, wishing I'd gone out in the fresh air. My only consolation? That Andy was still in bed when I called him, about 30 minutes ago, to see if he'd gone out.

Now I feel tainted by not having gone out, but that's the way of the world and I shouldn't beat myself up over it.