The hamlet of Steep Marsh, just outside Petersfield, was home, in the same period, to Day of the Triffids author John Wyndham and actor Sir Alec Guinness and his artist wife Merula. A small book carving by the side of the road explains this.

I *love* most of Sir Alec Guinness’ films, but especially Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where he played eight characters, including a cycling photographer toff. Sir Alex never drove, preferring to cycle from Steep to Petersfield or he would take the train to London from Liss.

I passed a pub — the Harrow Inn — much frequented by Sir Alex and Merula. Her goats would often be driven to the pub.

I didn’t know about Sir Alec’s connection with Petersfield and nor did I know about the important-to-the-war-effort history of the nearby Longmoor Military Railway between Bordon and Liss. Also known as the Woolmer Instructional Military Railway this was built in the early 1900s to train soldiers on railway construction and operation. In World War II it was used to train secret agents in the art of railway sabotage.

A great many movies were also filmed at the Longmoor Military Railway, including The Lady Vanishes (1938), which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Others included Sons and Lovers (1960), and The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery (1965.)

Decommissioned in 1972, the line is now a linear railway walk where cycles are allowed. I flew the drone over the line, now crowded out with trees.

In Guildford, I popped in to say hi to the folks at the HQ of Cycling UK. Except it was a Friday — news to me — and, with work from home now so common, especially in the run up to the weekend, there was hardly anybody there. Sophia from campaigns made me tea, and we chatted bike touring. Three jam doughnuts were pressed on me.

I still had another 35 miles to ride, and doughnuts are good for energy.

I sought out H. G. Wells stuff in his former home town of Woking and — given his famous quote about cycle tracks — “Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia,” 1905 — I was tickled to see a cycleway sign behind his statue.

As a great 1890s bike boom cyclist, Wells would be horrified by the cycleway from Woking to Windsor. It’s pretty dystopian.

However, it leaves the road and becomes beautifully rural as it cuts above Runnymede and its famous field.

As I’ve been photographing memorials to individual war time air crashes, as well as curating an aviation themed ride in Norfolk, I thought it apt that I visited the peaceful Air Forces Memorial in Englefield Green.

Windsor was packed, as usual, and I didn’t recognise any of Slough. The office used in The Office (2001-3) has long since been demolished but what about the industrial estate that’s not TV famous but important to me? I’ve not been back to Slough since the mid-1980s when I went there to pick up an HGV lift all the way to the Anatolian plateau.

Back in Norwich I had asked the bosses of a trucking firm for a free lift for me and my mountain bike (a novelty back then) to Turkey and they agreed. (After they’d picked themselves off the floor laughing at my cheek.)

The pick-up was in Slough, and I was taken to Turkey by the king of truckers, lauded at all the truck stops across Europe. In the middle of Turkey we got the bike off the top of his truck, and parted ways. He was heading to Iraq (maybe with big gun parts for Saddam Hussein?) and I cycled to Syria after what was probably the longest downhill of my life.

Back to today, I’m staying at the Ibis Budget hotel at the Beaconsfield services off the M40. I guess those motorway motorists following me in must have wondered how I got there.