What a day! It was very full indeed, and about the hottest so far I suspect. Let’s start with a video for a change: last night was such an unusual stopover on this crazy journey, I couldn’t resist filming the long walk from Room 128 to the the front lobby of this huge hotel, wheeling my road-grimed bicycle past the very few guests who were up before 5am like me. (The reason my light is flickering is that it’s a super-bright LED hub dynamo light, and only works fully once I’m moving properly).

• Today’s Distance (miles): 54
• Time in saddle: 4h 45
• Max/min temp (°c): 47°/21° (ok it’s official – due to being out and about at lunchtime, that’s the hottest day so far)
• Climbing (feet) :
• Calories used: 3,078
• Today’s 2nd Breakfast: Cheese omelette, fruit cup, orange juice and coffee, Denny’s St Augustine.
• Cafe time: 2h 14

On paper I thought today would be simple, but it wasn’t. I just needed to ride Highway 1 all the way to St Augustine, approximately 40 miles – that was it. After about 20 miles there was a Highway signboard flashing, to say that the bike lane was closed after the next junction. So I had to make a big left turn, cycle right over to the coast, adding about 15 complicated miles of navigating, and start cycling down the A1A exactly a day earlier than planned. I tried to glimpse the sea on my left, but the land rose quite steeply and the amazing houses were huge, so I had be patient.

When the houses dwindled I spotted a public beach access point (with a ramp!) so at around 8.30am I rolled my bike as close as I could to the sea, then rushed as fast as I could into the water, for my first swim in ages. It was so welcome – the sun was fully up by now and it was already close to 30°.

SEA-SWIM-VID!: This is more like it.

This was my fist taste of the A1A and it was quite reminiscent of cycling on the Outer Banks, with the sea on either side of you and a pretty healthy headwind too. Two things were different – the houses were much more exclusive, shaded, gated and private, and the temperature was several notches up too, certainly for 8.45am. I really missed the forest shade of the last few mornings on the inland road, despite the wonderful location.

I was riding on much too light a breakfast – just some trail mix and a single Reeses Peanut butter cup, plus the very good Keurig machine hotel room coffee – mainly because I’d expected such a straightforward ride with lots of chances to stop if needed. This was different, and I felt it. The only chance I got on the A1A was a Gas Station at 40 miles, where I had a quick chocolate milk and some lemonade, but pressed on for the last 10 miles to St Augustine to find food.

When I ordered my breakfast in the diner – a Denny’s again because despite all of the local options I was a bit short of time and it was near my motel – the waitress asked if I’d like it with hash browns, fries, or….fruit. ‘Fruit?’, I asked. ‘You do fruit?’. ‘Uh-huh – shall I bring a bowl?’. I’d just been thinking on the bike that I hadn’t seen as much as an apple for several days, which is quite unusual for me. And sure enough, with my cheese omelette and rye toast she brought me a nice big bowl of banana, melon and grapes, which lasted not very long at all.

I had a very special reason to be so happy to have made it to St Augustine. Back in 1983, when I was still at Music College, my older brother Oliver was at Cambridge, and my younger brother Seb was, I think, away on a trip to Panama, my parents took the chance to go on a World Tour. Dad had recently taken early retirement from the BBC and Mum was able to get time away from her job as a school teacher, so they celebrated by travelling literally all over the world. One place on their itinerary for the US stage was St Augustine.

I got in touch with Dad about it the other day, and he scoured the family archives and managed to dig up a few photo memories of that day forty years ago. I was so happy to get them, and decided to go on a Buckton Family Heritage Trail, recreating one or two great moments from history. I started at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument:

My lovely motel, the Southern Oaks Inn (another crazy bargain booking) told me the room wasn’t ready until 4pm unless I wanted to pay $20 early check in fee? I didn’t, because the lobby was cool and spacious, with lots of leather sofas, the friendly woman at the desk had just made a fresh urn of surprisingly good (and strong!) lobby coffee, and a bakery had just delivered a plate of complimentary chocolate brownies. So I settled down to a couple of hours of writing, messaging, thinking and phoning home. (See the very end of this post to see a consequence of this pause in my day.) ‘If you want a break you could have a swim in the pool too’, she told me after a while. ‘You can use the restrooms to change!’ What a nice place. As often happens to me at the moment, my intentions of going out later to try to find somewhere to eat faded along with my energy at around 4 or 5pm. These early starts have really started to have an impact on me.

ARTS AND CULTURE: Taken at the Castillo today, this is my own contribution to the tradition of the American Still Life*:

*REALLY BIG DIGRESSION TIME: I heard a podcast last night about stillness, and how there isn’t any such thing. It was quite disconcerting. Everything in the universe, the many contributors explained, is moving, all the time and in every possible direction, absolutely everywhere. It was a bit shocking to think this, especially as I so enjoy being really still, like I am now, after my day spent on two ever-spinning wheels. The nearest you can get to inactivity is to be a photon of light: if you could ‘ride’ that photon then nothing around you would ever seem to move, because nothing travels faster than light, so there would be perfect stillness. Except you’d have to be travelling at 671 million miles an hour to achieve this ‘stillness’. You can’t win really, can you?

THE EVER-CHANGING VIEW: Talking of moving all the time, something that happens quite often is that I’m moving along at a good speed and see something that would be well worth a photo, but by the time I’ve slowed down enough, the view has changed and the moment has gone. Yesterday I saw the biggest brewery I’ve ever seen, the main Budweiser one for this area I guess. It was the size of a nuclear power station, plus a chemical works thrown in on the side, for good measure. Impressed just by the crazy scale of it, I started slowing down, coming up with a comment at the same time, something along the lines of ‘I do like a good local micro brewery’. When I ground to halt and turned around, with iPad poised at the ready for the killer picture, because of my angle it now looked like nothing more than an industrial unit round the back of Hemel Hempstead. I didn’t bother with the photo.

NATURE SECTION: This delicate beauty is from several days ago, my last camping night in Buck Hall Campground, South Carolina in fact, but I forgot to post it and I still want to know what it is! You can hardly believe it could survive even the lightest puff of wind, it’s so fine. It’s from the same night as the starfish on the bench, which Sam identified as a Gray Sea Star (Luidia clathrata):

HOUSES THAT ARE FUNNY:

CRANES THAT ARE EVEN BIGGER THAN YOU THOUGHT THEY WERE:

SIGNS THAT ARE APPOSITE:

COMPLETE STRANGERS SPENDING TIME WITH MY BIKE: I really liked watching this solo-traveller – a middle-aged Japanese woman – using the shade I had chosen for my bike to try to open her map. When I joined her to unlock the bike she apologised profusely, in that incredibly humble way that only Japanese people seem to manage, and told me she wanted to see the Castillo but hadn’t realised it was pay-to-enter. She said she enjoyed travelling alone but found the US expensive. I felt great empathy for her, being often in the same boat, so I gave her my entry ticket, and told her that no one checked them anyway. She was so sweet about it, and was still thanking me and wishing me good luck as I wheeled the Hewitt away. Then as I looked round I saw that she almost ran into the castle.

SIGNS THAT ARE FUNNY:

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: I have an important announcement to make tomorrow regarding the destination of this trip down the east coast of the US. It’s something I’ve been mulling over for several days now, and has certainly been a tough call, but I’ll tell you all the details first thing in tomorrow’s blog; for now I’m still working out a few issues that affect other people. If that isn’t a cliff-hanger-teaser then I don’t know what is, but I know you won’t mind, dear Friends of the Blog, since we all enjoy a cliff-hanging-tease from time to time. So see you again tomorrow, when I’ll explain everything.