fog everywhere, fog up the river where it flows among green aits and meadows - fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out in the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships ... and fog, wrapping seventeen intrepid cyclists, quietening the sound around, and the sound of their cogs and wheels. Fog, condensing on spectacles, on jerseys, on brake levers. And then...fog, giving way to sunlight as those cyclists took the road up from the Weald to top of the Beacon. At resting points, where horse carts were chocked and locked, they looked to the north, to see trees, roof ridges and church steeples rise into the pink sun. And then they stopped, to toast those brave boys and girls lately triumphant in France. To toast their success, and to toast their return with champagne that tasted all the sweeter for the fog on their lips.
