The story of the 36 miles ride with a tiger

36 miles (58 km) by bike from Bristol to Bath (and back) along a refurbished railway path. Incredible energizing and beatiful.

But even more incredible have been when I have looked at the path on google maps. Most part of the way we were thinking we were in the middle of nowhere, everything looked so green, covered by woods and grasslands, and we even crossed a big and dark tunnel.

I will start with the tunnel. It was big, long, old, dark and wet. Water dripping all over the place. "There might be a river or lake above", I said. At some point in the tunnel there was an opening in the ceiling from which the sunlight was entering. What a misterious and magical place!

Well, here it is the tunnel from above. No lake, we don't know where was all that water coming from and the odd opening turns out to be a strange structure built with old stone inside a residential area.

I wonder if they know what that thing next to their houses is.

A few miles later we stop to have lunch. We found a grassland taking a small path next to the railway path. We lay down there taking every sun ray we can with our skin. We were almost covered by the tall grass. We heard some chiming bells. "There might be a town nearby. And even here we can hear the bells!" we said. We were also hearing kids playing, but because there was a lot of people in the path we assumed there would be something interesting just a little bit ahead. When we keep riding we saw a big sculpture which is also a drinking fountaing and some kids playing there with water ballons. "Wow, the kids here surely make a lot of exercise if they are coming here to play" I though.

Well, here it is the big grassland lost and our lunch and sunbathing retreat were we felt like in the middle of nature. We were eating and resting at the green mark. The fountain is marked in red. And the far away chiming bells are in the church marked with the red cross. Also note the "wast solutions site" at the left side of the picture which we didn't see at all, of course.

There are also other minor surprises that can be summarised in "I had no idea that we were doing such a detour" and "Most of the way we were surrounded by residential areas we couldn't see".

The fun and irony is that after our ride and before I looked on google maps we have been watching "The life of Pi". If you have seen the movie you may understand why now I have the feeling that both versions of my biking day are real, but there is cleary one that I prefer.