This morning’s journey back from Asda, with the week’s worth of supermarket shopping. (We’ll call in at other shops most days for the rest of the stuff we need.) It took quite a while to get the bag on the back secure – as well as the organic milk and potatoes it contained two bottles of wine and four of beer – but mainly because I kept getting my iPod wire twisted up with the bungee cords.

One of the best things about doing this journey by bike is that, if we were in a car, we’d hardly know that the lough or castle were there. When people think about switching from driving to cycling for local trips, they often assume that they have to use the same roads. Enniskillen is in many ways a useless place to cycle – there are hardly any of us who do so, the place is perpetually covered in broken glass, moronic chavs wind down their windows and hurl abuse and bottles and half the population drive massive tank-like 4x4s. But even here there are lots of absolutely beautiful and almost empty paths to cycle along, just going from one boring busy place to another.

p.s. Yes, it is the English flag of St. George flying from the castle – a bit of leftover imperialism that we’re supposed, for some reason, to regard as a compliment.