There are many wonderful things about not being able to drive; waking to a rain-lashed window with a round trip of 30 miles ahead isn’t one of them. Like an unwilling horse, my bike seemed reluctant to leave the garage. Soaked before I’d got to the end of the drive, my long-suffering wife obliged by dropping me at the bus stop on her way to work. Rain drumming the metal roof of the shelter, the forlorn queue squeezed together like penned sheep. Cold as well as rainy. A bus came, then another. At last mine, the Dales bus. Windscreen wipers clattering, raindrops racing down every window, the world withdrew from our sight. Our journey took us through every village, more like a boat than a bus. The rain kept up all day until suddenly, on the way home, the sun came out. We had just