End of Part One

I am feeling mildly pleased with myself: 44,ooo words are in the bag and Part One of my new novel is in the post to my agent. I want feedback, of course. I want to know I’m on the right track. I also want a reward; a pat on the back. I'm nearly halfway through the new book and am going to treat myself to a break from staring at my lap top screen.
The morning is too beautiful to ignore. This is it, everyone, our Indian summer. I haul my rusty, trusty old bike out of the shed, brush off the spider webs and hope nothing eight-legged and sinister is lurking under the seat. I pump up the tyres, fill my water bottle, put on all the gear… it takes so long! Nearly give up and think I’ll just go for a run instead. But at last I am whizzing, wheezing, out of my little home town into deep Chiltern countryside. The thing about "round here" is that it is very hilly. I have to plan my route with care to keep the tally low. Without going all "Country File" on you, it really is exquisitely beautiful. Towering hedgerows, shaded copses, glittering meadows. Scarlet rosehips, glowing blackberries, leaves on the turn.
Whenever I set out early on a Sunday morning, there are always joggers, dog walkers and horse riders who all nod and say "morning". It’s like a little smug gang up and about so early, not a hangover in sight. And, as I heave my way up a particularly brutal slope, I am guaranteed to be lapped by an old boy in his sixties, thin as a whippet, clad head to toe in lycra, zipping past on his racer like a streak of lightning.
I know I’ve probably gone too far when, instead of enjoying my surroundings, I start thinking about getting home for a cup of tea and a slice of cake. But, I keep telling myself, all this peddling is good for the mind as well as the body. When I finally reach the brow of a hill and see the lane falling away into the valley below, I know this is my reward. I lift up my feet and free wheel, whooping like a little girl. As I pick up speed and hurtle down the slope, ideas and imagination flow, and writer’s block is blown clean away, just like all those cobwebs and the odd lurking spider that decided to hitch a lift.