Trowbridge/Frome/Bradford-on-Avon morning beer (-less) run

To get home by early afternoon and still have time to take care of some time-sensitive paperwork while in Trowbridge, I took the first #49 bus out of Swindon at 6 am Saturday.  It was kind of a melancholy morning riding the bus through the north Wiltshire farmland as the sun peeked through the clouds. I realised, later, that I was also listening to an especially bleak edition of Last Word, an obit show on Radio 4.

 

 

In Devizes, the bus stopped to pick up the freak pictured above.  When I hopped off at Trowbridge to start my run, he alighted as well.  We spoke for a while and I discovered that he was heading to a psychics’ gathering at Glastonbury to sell jewelry he has refurbished from charity shop finds.  We traded a few tourism tales from our personal experiences of the area and then bade each other safe passage.

Since this was to be my last run in the area, I kept alert for a souvenir. Buried in the mud, a cliché for the new house attached itself to my shoe; here it is sans the nails and filth:

 

 

 

I arrived at the George at 8:50, twenty minutes behind schedule. The bartender asked if he could help then promptly refused to pour a beer. “Not till 10 am, mate.” Trying not to argue, I replied, “oh, that’s disappointing,” but the fucker wouldn’t let it go. “This is a pub, mate, not a Wetherspoons.” “Pubs and ‘Spoons serve beer when they’re open. You appear to be neither.” I left parched.

 

 

 

 

Or, rather, drenched as I tend to sweat all-to-be-damned. The t-shirt retirements have resumed as I shed the last vestments brought with us when we refugeed out of Ameriqa. This one is from the Bisbee 1000 Stairs race ten years ago and now in a park in Frome.

 

 

 

From the same era and similarly in tatters, the Shirt I got from Modern Drunkard after writing some dive bar reviews was no longer fit for purpose and came to sweaty rest in a canal side beer garden in Bradford-on-Avon. RIP.

 

 

 

I arrived in Trowbrdge with plenty of time to complete my bureaucratic crap but the device required was out of service following a power outage. Every disappointment should be considered an opportunity and I knew from the CAMRA website that the Courthouse was serving from 10 am.

 

 

 

 

Then, I spotted this sign in the window:

 

 

The day ended as it began (albeit with 23 more running miles logged and a .333 beer batting average). I was just beginning to wonder if I would square the circle by spotting another freak on the return trip when we pulled into Avebury and a bunch of hippies were gathered drumming and stinking and awaiting the solstice after the weekend.