The pair in the middle had served me long and well. Seven thousand kilometres of cycling and many years of wandering about. Unless it's snowing, I rarely wear anything else on my feet.

I walked into Lewisham one day, for a haircut. The walk wasn't intentional but, in haste, I'd jumped on to the bus going to Peckham, not the one to Catford! I realised my mistake and 'alighted' at Deptford Bridge and walked into Lewisham from there.

The path, parallel to a dirty trickle called – somewhat grandiosely, in my opinion – the River Ravensbourne. Ravensbourne Park, heavily vegetated, provides surprising habitat for birdlife amidst the very urban south-east London borough of Lewisham. It seemed unlikely that there was much in the way of sustenance for this heron but it seemed quite content. Patient. Unconcerned by my presence.

You are never far from the prying eyes of CCTV in the UK. The camera blends in well with the artwork beside an entrance to Lewisham Shopping Centre. Big Brother is everywhere.

My brother Chris and I had a very pleasant day trip down to Hastings, a little seaside and fishing town that I had no recollection of visiting before. All English schoolchildren, at least in my day, learned of Hastings: it was the location of the 1066 Battle of Hastings, repelling the French of William the Conqueror. It was the first sunny day in ages, and too early for the summer season, so most visitors enjoying the warmth were retirees like ourselves, and locals enjoying a respite from the recent rains.

This is probably a pro-Brexit area. Fishers in the UK have had a hard go of it for decades and they were promised better times independent of Europe. These promises, if they weren't outright lies, amounted to nothing. Except that now, depressed areas are no longer eligible for EU subsidies. And, of course, support promised by the Conservatives disappeared almost as soon as the vote was tallied.

There is a bitter irony in the English flag displayed proudly, or defiantly, by those wanting England out of Europe. The tabloids warned of mass immigration of Turks into England when Turkey became a member of the European Union, feeding many Briton's racist fears. This was one of many lies told to the population by much of the press. Well, Turkey didn't join the EU. And St George, the patron saint of England – unknown to most Brexiters – was a Turk.

On my ride up to Waterloo station (10.1 km) to catch a train to Portsmouth and the ferry to Santander, Spain, I called in at UK Cycles. I needed a new bell. They had none on display but the man behind the counter disappeared to the workshop and came back with a functional bell, which he quickly installed on my bike. No charge for the bell. Feeling uplifted by this friendly service, I continued up to town with a smile on my face. With time to spare, I stopped into The Dog & Bell for an early pint; there wouldn't be another cask beer for a couple of months.

Portsmouth was a shock. Cold and windy. Much more so than London had felt. I rode from the station to the ferry terminal (2.7 km) and was pretty much the first passenger on the boat — and my cabin was comfortable. A little over the top, a four-berther just for me. The outward ferry, Portsmouth to Santander, is two nights and one day of sailing. I had decided on the cabin option rather than sleeping in a reclining seat for two consecutive nights. Age has its privileges. Or is it requisites?

A civilized way to travel, compared to flying. Relaxed, football (soccer) matches on the TV. A smooth crossing – I would have been happier for some strenuous rolling of the ship but there were no waves of note and, what there were, were cancelled out by the ship's stabilizers. Better than the smell of seasickness.

We docked at 8:00 and the cyclists (there were three tandems and three single-occupancy bikes) were off the ship and through immigration quickly. In time for me to arrive at the station before the first train left for Oviedo.

Except that when I rolled up onto the empty platform a couple of minutes early, the train rolled away. Part of me wondered whether the driver was having a bad day. Damn, seven and a half hours until the next train!

I tried the bus station, across a square from the train station. My bike would have to be 'wrapped.' I queried 'wrapped' but the lady couldn't explain what that meant. Cardboard was mentioned. An American couple, presumably peregrinos, overheard my laboured discussion and mentioned that the post office would wrap the bike for me (they had just sent some stuff home, as many do once they have a few days carrying unnecessary weight on their backs, up and down hills) and were sure they would look after me. Maybe, but too much hassle to save a few hours. How would I get the incapacitated bike back to the bus station? A taxi, probably. I decided to read my book and wait for the 1536 train. And get on to the platform a little early!

Even now, this journey was not certain. The ticket office had sold me a ticket only as far as Llanes. Apparently, they didn't know whether the train would continue. The train did say Oviedo on it so... Once underway, a conductor checked my tickets (one for myself and one for the bike) and sold me a couple more for Llanes to Oviedo. Looking good!

A gentle rattle through pretty green hills, with fleeting but spectacular coastal views. A train change at Llanes.

On again, more inland now, lots of stops, people getting on and off for journeys of a few minutes. Through a place called Poo, reminding me of a identically named town in the Himachal Pradesh of northern India. In HP, there had supposed to be a much photographed signpost, "Turn left to Poo," but I hadn't seen it on my ride past. Maybe the local bigwigs had thought it embarrassing? I managed to get a quick phone picture of this train station sign. Schoolboy humour? Guilty as charged.

There were two more, unscheduled, changes of train. We stopped at small stations, were steered out of carriages by the conductor, and waited for another train to arrive. Nobody seemed to know what platform we'd be on or what necessitated the change. We were told to wait on platform X, then quickly to move to platform Y, then wait again. Fortunately, instead of bridges between platforms – involving steps, a pain for me – each platorm had a ramp at the end where I could wheel the bike down, across the tracks and up a corresponding ramp on the adjacent platform.

For the final stage of the journey to Oviedo, the driver seemed to be attempting to make up lost time and the carriage wobbled from side to side quite dramatically. Fortunately, not wildly enough to tip over the bike! We arrived in Oviedo less than half-an-hour behind schedule.

I remembered an escalator up from the Oviedo station from last year. Always a bit worrying with a loaded bike. Get the front wheel on, hit the brake and step backwards as the front reared up, and hope to remain in control.

There was a second escalator, which was where things went wrong. I stepped back and, presumably, missed a step as it materialized out of two flat adjacent treads. All I knew was that I was on my knees, being carried up the escalator, head below my feet as I tried to support myself on my hands, rolling down the moving steps and trying to crawl off the bottom of the escalator. Which kept moving me away from stationary ground and safety. It felt like the rolling and frantic crawling continued awhile but it probably was only for a few seconds, everything happening in slow motion. Thankfully, a man got on below me (I remember wondering why the escalator hadn't been halted but there might not have been an emergency stop button) and stopped my fall. Proceeding up the escalator backwards, head down, I managed to get shakily to my feet and disentangling myself from the bike. I was a bit shaken by the time I reached the top and managed to wheel my bike off.

My saviour, a youngish jet-black man, kept close as I left the station for the relief of a bench. I assured him that I was fine, not really knowing that I was, and that I had a hotel to go to and he wandered off while I assessed the damage. Scrapes to both lower legs, blood dripping from four cuts below my left knee and from the bottom of my right shin. Grid lines on my knees from where I had knelt on the moving treads. Thankfully, nothing immediately obvious on my upper body.

I sat for ten minutes or so, regaining some measure of composure, on the bench under shelter outside the glass station building entrance. On the next bench, three homeless people were engaged in an argument, or a loud excited conversation. A woman was on a double mattress, covered by a thin quilt, looked vulnerable to the two men looking down on her. Then one retrieved a cell phone from his pocket and started a conversation, then passed the phone to the woman, so they seemed known to each other and I felt free to find my way to my hotel. Which, as the crow flies, was about 150 metres away. Of course, it took considerably more distance for me to find that out.