A-coffeeneuring I Will Go

After my accidental near-errandonnee earlier this year, I was determined that next time I would do better at whatever whimsical challenge Chasing Mailboxes might throw at me. And when I saw that it was merely to visit seven coffee shops in seven weekends,* I thought it was going to be easy. All right, I live approximately 7 miles from even the nearest coffee shop and there aren’t actually that many around, but there are definitely more than seven, and taking one leisurely ride each weekend for a hot caffeine-based beverage plus optional cake seemed well within my powers.

The problem I encountered, however, was the weekend part. One of the things about being being a freelancer is that you don’t have a weekend, especially not when you also combine it with cycle campaigning – oh and I used to have a writing career once, didn’t I? I wonder where I put that? Last weekend was particularly hectic with Saturday spent Pop-plotting in Embra (followed by a trip to the pub – could our next challenge be pub-based perhaps?) and Sunday spent running a pop-up bookshop where I barely had chance to draw breath let alone go out for a nice relaxing ride for coffee. No, in order to enter into the spirit of the thing, I was going to have to designate another day my weekend and do it properly.

So I have decreed that Thursday is the weekend, at least for coffeeneuring purposes, although my schedule means I was also working for most of it. But it is my least hectic day and that will have to do. It was a sunny if slightly nippy afternoon, and I managed to rope in another coffeeneur and a non-coffeeneur to join me and we rode to the lovely Nona Lou’s which is best described as ‘not at all the sort of place you expect to find in Bigtown’.

We were so busy chatting we’d finished our coffee before we remembered we were supposed to take photographs so here is some tea instead

And then I cycled along the river on what had turned out to be the most glorious autumn afternoon. Total mileage about 10 miles.

I can see this challenge is going to be a tough one, but I think I will just have to grit my teeth, try my best, and stick it out to the end.

* Note that this means an average of one coffee shop per weekend, not seven.