day 28

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Day 28 Sunday. Today was my long ride day, and the plan was to go late morning, skip Church, and be back by mid afternoon, but I woke up feeling really ropey, and spent most of the day in bed. I didn’t really have the energy to move that much, and my nose is all snotty and I’ve got a really vicious cough, so it quickly became apparent that today wasn’t the day for me to go on a really long training ride, despite the cloudy weather meaning it was a bit cooler. I emerged for a couple of hours in the afternoon, before heading back to bed and sleeping again for a few more hours. The kids had been promised a trip to the beach and so I tagged along for that, which was excellent fun. The tide was just on its way out, but the pebbles on the beach are just amazing, the sort of thing people would pay a fortune to have in their back gardens, and there is a beach full of them here. The other thing that’s a bit different is that, given that the whole area is volcanic, the sand is actually black, not the golden colour we’re used to seeing. This makes it look very odd at first, but there is something quite beautiful about the black sand with shimmering glistening specks all over it. It does, however, get very hot in the sunshine, so it was just as well the tide was almost completely in, so the little sand there was on the beach was wet! The girls had great fun leaping out of the path of incoming waves, and Helen was actually brave enough to go in for a quick swim, despite the water being rather cold! After that, it was back home and the most gorgeous roast beef dinner in the evening when Mark got back from work. With there being no chance of my training, it was an early night to try and sleep off the worst of the cold 4:15 ride NOT done. Not good at all.

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