We rode into sunset and into the forest, well a French sort of forest. We ran across the Camino de Santiago train and a giant bug flew into my eye, it was time to try wild camping again, but this was no scotland, we had to keep it secret. We found a kayaking club by a river and set up between some trees, it was warm and a bit spooky. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned to Dylan the stories I had read about people waking on this forest to find gypsies in their caravan in the middle of the night.

We left the tent flap open, our bikes glowing in the full moon light, the river made a strange squeaking like footsteps and the birds coo-cooed in the trees above.

Rays of sunlight burn through the trees. Their leaves sighing in the wind and the grasses hiss. Summer has come to Cambridge.

Students loll all the way along the grassy river banks in a post exam haze. It’s easy to be nostalgic for those long afternoons chatting on university lawns, but the stress and drudgery of the earlier seasons still burn hot for me. After all here I am riding passed them along dappled tracks with flat bottom clouds hanging in a cobalt sky, post uni life ain’t so bad if you know how to live it.

We come across an allotment garden full of flowers and overgrown with grass. I wonder if we’ll be apartment dwellers with a garden like this or country bunnies in the next few years.

At Jay’s sisters, Dylan is training the kids to be running stars. Barefoot they race up and down the street. Their competitiveness sees Dylan trapped with stop watch in hand as they try to shave off a second to emerge victorious. the youngest wanders away to find a ball, as his little legs can’t compete with his sisters. Then a bath is run and we leave the sun to set on brick walls and rambling roses.

“Cutting it a bit fine” the guard glowered at us as we sprinted our bikes to the front carriage. She was in no mood to help me as I struggled to lift my bike onto the rack.

Andrew had greeted us that morning with two overflowing glasses of freshly pulveriaed wheatgrass and ginger tonic, “I couldn’t let you go without a detox”. My throat still burned and eyes still watered with “health”. As with all goodbyes, it’s hard not to linger, Iris gleefully parroted “goodbye Jo, goodbye Dylan”  waving us all the way down the driveway, a beautiful family portrait that disappeared as we crunched down the drive. We were lucky with two connections to make we had made it with seconds to spare.

The second train ride we spent next to a couple doing identical crosswords on their ipads, the gentleman was inordinately excited at the size of his bag of crisps “they’ll last us all week!”. We passed through a rain storm, the other side was summer. In the building heat we just stood, starring at a guide dog happily sprawled across the floor.

Then there was Cambridge. Sunny streets, with bikes piled against every fence and lampost, carelessly locked by the wheel if that. It was all rather lively with rambling roses on brick walls and red geraniums in window boxes.

We met the nanny first, she jovially informed us the kids would be heartbroken if they didn’t get to show us our room in the attic so we took a walk through the university and witnessed a punter disembarking his vessel in the middle of the river and being hauled back in by merry comrades, exams were over.

We returned to meet the three kids and the babysitter. They seemed less interested in showing us our room than advertised, but began warming up to us pretty rapidly. It was funny to be in someone’s home you have never met, making yourself comfortable while they are absent. With the whole confusing family tree on Dylan’s side, we later all agreed it was easier if we were labelled ‘australian relatives’; we had a nap to keep out of the way. When we met Hil and Nick we got on like a house on fire and as a bonus they made us tea, we’d fallen on our feet again.