Here a great story off a woman touring the world, '' A widow with three grown-up stepchildren, she was on holiday from Saint Felix School, Suffolk, in 1983 when the glimpse of a European cyclist pedalling through the Great Indian Desert in Rajasthan decided her to do the same. She was over 50, out of condition and had no interest in bicycles. But, in the tradition of indomitable Englishwomen abroad, she was untroubled by such trifles.
It took some three years to withdraw from her commitments before pupils and staff gave her a green Condor bicycle, specially built with real leather seat, two sets of brakes, 10 gears and a speedometer. On May 31 1987 they saw her off from Watling Street, near St Paul's Cathedral, her three panniers filled with clothes, documents, maps and dictionaries as well as Horace's Odes and letters of introduction to be presented along the way. Heading over London Bridge, she passed through Blackheath and was hailed on the A2 by Telegraph readers who had seen her photograph in the paper, before freewheeling down to Dover's docks. .....''
Charles Nighbor
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/