South Riding 12: To Horley

As I went to pay for a coffee in Horsham I reached into my pocket and felt the room keys from the Guest House. Bugger! It meant that I had to retrace my route to return them.

This could have been a major setback if my route was to be taking me further away but it wasn’t. Horsham was the trip’s southerly tip and the next stop was back to Horley, so it was only a minor of detour. However my rather pleasant memory of a long fast downhill would be reversed if I went back exactly the same way. But that is the point of having a map with contour lines and so I found a different way, again on small beautiful country lanes, but with slightly less of a gradient. Most of the route was quite close to Gatwick Airport but it was amazing how the noise only really affected quite a narrow band of land directly below the flight path. A little outside the path and it felt  a remote country area - all lush beauty.

Then into Horley, and my first thoughts were not of memories but of food. I was feeling very tired (the exertions of yesterday were still in my legs), hungry, and in need of a break. The energy reserves, needed for the rest of the day, were critically low and I really felt like a nap. I thought of the man in Wimbledon and smiled – there was no way I could nap like that, sitting upright. But one thought led to another and I had the idea of a take-away  chow mien, which I could eat on a seat in a newly pedestrianised street. Good choice - excellent food for cyclists.

I then started to look around. There had obviously been changes: a new Waitrose for example, but not too many. In essence it was still a town beside the London to Brighton Railway - another place of transit.

I have probably lived in too many places of transit, places that are not destinations in themselves but allow access to somewhere else. This is probably related to being a commuter all my working life. Wherever I have been I have needed to be somewhere else. It is probably a mistake. It is better to live somewhere you are happy to be; somewhere you are content to spend time. That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy my time living in these places – I did. It is just that they do not give you a sense of place, a feeling of identification.