Geoff Jones

I was on the road just after 7am for the 40 mile ride up the coast and back to where I started 24 days ago.

An interesting ride along the beautiful coast, some what marred with so called luxury hotels hidden behind their prison height walls 🙁 with an intermingling of shacks and closer to Colombo a veritable shanty town around the railway line. Pretty astonishing such poverty in so much natural beauty.

The road I came into Colombo was just full of workshops either sawing up giant tree trunks or making furniture and doors etc. No health and safety here! shudder to think how many fingers and eyes have been lost from the huge circular saws 🙁

I arrived at the West Inn at 1pm for the bike to be reunited with its box 🙂 The Strava is here and pics here

I then spent all afternoon to rearrange my flight home. My word the Qatar Airlines website is a total & utter shambles, glossy on the service but totally broken underneath apart from booking new flights. In the end out of desperation I went to their Facebook page and finally using Facebook Messenger the job was done! but oh how painful 🙁

I will be back home on Monday morning.

Here are the stats of the trip:

Thursday 23 February 2017

A really early start at 6.35 from the educational house 🙂 they were using the carport where my bike was stored as an evening classroom last night whilst her daughter was marking!

I had plotted a route last night away from the coast along quieter roads. The only problem was when I left it was the school rush hour! with hundreds of kids and various forms of transport everywhere! a bit like around Em’s old school magnified to Indian proportions 🙂

Once the last stragglers made it the road quietened down and it turned into a pleasant ride along the backwaters of Sri Lanka,  all the prices came tumbling down on leaving Galle Fort and once again i could get drinks for 37p or so 🙂

Eventually I reached the A2 coast road for the last small stretch into Bentota, patting myself on the back for avoiding all that traffic all morning.

I had booked into Bentota Beach Resort after reading the Rides around Sri Lanka book and their offerings of river trips to the mangrove swamps nearby. However, its really pricey X4 what I paid last night. OK it is infinitely more luxurious than last night especially the 35 metre long outdoor pool but beers are £4 a pint instead of £1. Interestingly the government adds an extra 30% tax on these luxury places.

I arrived at before 11am so was able to max out on pool time and mess about with the open water swim mode on the watch – it seemed to work quite well although I’ve now measured the pool on Google Earth so tomorrow is the real test!

The Strava is here and a few pics here