I removed my bike helmet and wiped my sweaty face. It was hot. I was at a memorial to a pilot shot down by German Messerschmitts in the skies overhead during the Second World War. Appropriately, the fields around were filled with poppies. Scattered at the base of the memorial was the rubbish from a KFC takeaway. The ten-piece Wicked Variety bucket contained 4,790 calories, the large fries had 1,440 and there were 750 more in the large Pepsi. I hoped it had been shared around, for that is a spectacular 6,980 calories, enough to fuel one eater through an impressive 69.8-mile run. Although given that they had been too lazy to put their rubbish in a bin, I doubted these calories were being used for long-distance running. 

A cockerel crowed from behind a nearby hedge, jubilant not to have been fried. I rarely heard cockerels around here, but the sound reminded me of travels in other countries, of pre-dawn wake ups in the Philippines and the potholed roads of rural Nicaragua.