Tuesday June 17
Bath Y.H.

Hello again & for the last time! As you can see, I missed a day of writing. Naughty, naughty!

I said I was going to follow the Fosse Way from Stow-on-the-Wold to Bath but I started out by heading to Bourton-on-the-Water via Lower Swell, two more lovely Cotswold villages. I didn't get enough sleep the night before for some reason so I was feeling rather tired all day & pedaling slowly. I arrived in Northleach by noon & Cirencester at 1 o'clock for lunch. I had a packed lunch from the hostel but I bought another of those ginger cakes & a pint of milk. After a short cat-nap in the church yard I set off down the A429 - Fosse Way but the highway deviated from the straight line & I couldn't see a turn-off. So I went through Tetbury then tried to find the Fosse Way again. I found it, but it wasn't a road as shown on map, it was a path, very overgrown. It did turn into a road farther down & I rejoined it after the M4. This was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

The weather had been fairly good but occasionally showery. Just after getting on the F.W. I went up a hill & bang goes another spoke. The bike, which for the last two or three days had given me no trouble at all, decided I wasn't paying it enough attention. Well, I adjusted the wheel not to scrape & kept on going. Just as I got to the top of the last hill, there was a huge air force base. I've seen cow crossings, sheep crossings, pedestrian crossings, old folks crossings, deer crossings, troop crossings, truck crossings and now I've seen the ultimate... an aircraft crossing! There on the hill were a set of traffic lights & a sign saying: "Danger, low flying aircraft" and another saying: "Aircraft crossing, no parking between signals." There was a runway just to the side of the road & a set of leading lights across the field to the other side. I didn't see any aircraft crossing however, so I didn't bother with a picture.