Day 3 Salisbury

My legs refuse to move. My thigh muscles feel like they are trying to grow another muscle on top of the already existing ones.

I feel exhausted. I take a step, unnaturally, without really flexing my legs, to avoid the growing pain. I cross the campsite ground in the dark, leaving the shower room to regain our tent and crawl inside it.

Josh thinks a massage will help my muscles recover, but I really don’t want any added discomfort. He insists.

My thighs seem to be releasing some kind of poison into my body every time he presses on them. Why did I think that I’d be capable of cycling 50 kilometers every day, with something like 25 kilograms of luggage on the back, after not exercising at all for a full year? Also, who knew England was so hilly? It didn’t cross my mind. We are spending our days climbing one hill after the other, which is quite a challenge for a girl like me, who’s coming from the lowlands of France.

We finally made it to Stonehenge. We have not been here since the summer solstice festival, and the ruins look less mystical without the pagan festivities and its people dancing in full costume, sunrise in the background. Still, this place calls you back into your true minuscule self.
This is where we had planned to stop after our first day of cycling, but we were very far from making it. I can feel Josh’s disappointment at how slow I am progressing.

I try to ask him to be patient, like the boaters. These boaters we met today were literally climbing a hill, with their boat. It takes no less than going through 29 locks, for a boat to make the climb over Caen Hill, and about a full afternoon. It is so much faster to walk. Still, these people chose to do it, for the sheer beauty of climbing a hill in a boat.

That’s what we’re doing too. Of course, we are slow, we chose to be slow, to be cycling instead of flying or driving, for the sheer beauty of powering our own bodies through the country and seeing comfortable green hills, fluffy cows and smiling people passing by, at a human pace.

We cycled through Salisbury, stopping to see the cathedral and the Magna Carta, and made our way towards Southampton.