When I was a young girl, I used to devour Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books, set in a fictional girls boarding school in Cornwall, where on occasion a girl would be “sent to Coventry”. This meant that she would be shunned by the others, but I never understood the reference to Coventry, as the only Coventry I knew was a yellow property on the Monopoly board.

Coventry is a city we’ve been told we could happily miss, but as it lies on today’s route between the Abbey and Stow-on-the-wold, we ride through the outskirts of town, through a rather insalubrious housing estate. I don’t really know if we’ve seen the best or the worst of the place, but we leave it behind fairly quickly.

There are a number of theories about the origin of the “sent to Coventry” term, but the most popular lies in military history, and traces back to the English Civil War, where the Royalist forces of King Charles I were pitted against the Parliamentarian armies of Oliver Cromwell. Coventry was a Parliamentarian stronghold, and is said to have housed hundreds of Royalist prisoners, who were not very popular, and hence ostracised. The English Civil War also turned out rather badly for King Charles I, who eventually lost his head, after which England spent a period of time without a monarch.

Today we are being shunned by the weather, which has turned on us in a grey drizzly way. All predictions point to a storm at around 4pm, so our aim is to get to Stow as quickly as possible. Whichever way we turn, we have the wind in our faces, and it is looking to be a tedious day in the saddle.

We spend a good deal of the day on a busy road – the A429. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of alternative routes; even when there is a back road, it will take us a much longer way, and still end up on the A429. We just choose to suck it up and get there quickly.

Neil very graciously lends me his wheel and I draft him for the rest of the day. This makes the ride fairly easy for me, but is obviously at great effort for him, because even over the sounds of wind and traffic I can hear the grunts that would only be familiar to anybody who has ever done a spin class with him. (He never does a spin class at anything other than maximum effort!)

Drafting means I use less effort, and at times I need to stop pedalling, or even brake to keep on Neil’s wheel and not pass him. When there’s a line of cars behind us, waiting the opportunity to get by, I feel a little guilty. The drivers may be thinking I am just cruising and deliberately holding them up, so I do a lot of soft pedalling to keep up appearances.

In case you are thinking I am having a completely easy day, drafting does me no good on hills. I still have to use my own efforts to climb, particularly on the last hill of the day, which is a hefty and relentless 5% climb, in rain, for the last few kilometres into Stow-on-the-wold.

I’m feeling quite fresh (albeit a little damp) when we arrive into town and check into The Sheep on Sheep Street, an upmarket, modern pub with pleasant and spacious accommodation.

We don’t have a lot of time in town, as we need to leave in the morning, so we are quickly out into the town exploring. Stow is a pretty little historical market town that is gussied up for visitors these days, with plenty of pubs, flower displays, quirky shops, a medieval church and lovely stone buildings.

We enjoy a pint in the Queen’s Head Inn, a dark and atmospheric traditional pub that has hop bouquet decorations, and, because it is raining, another pint in another pub where we meet some young Australian women with their Welsh partners, one of whom did see us huffing up that final hill in the rain.

Because I have a hankering for a Margherita pizza, we eat at the The Sheep, which is a tad more bistro-like than the other more traditional pubs. The pizza is nothing on my local back at home, but I am happily full up on carbs when finished. Neil “encourages” me to walk around the town in the rain after dinner, which I do, grumbling all the way, because I really just want to put my tired body to sleep – which is proof that drafting is not such an easy ride, right?

Stats for the day

• Distance travelled: 65.4km
• Climb: 574m
• Moving time: 3:50:54
• Average speed: 17km/h
• Average temperature: 17C
• See our ride on Strava.