Yesterday being an absolutely glorious day, I cycled over to Kirkcudbright for a cup of hot chocolate and a cake at my favourite pavement cafe. On the way over I encountered - and rode with, for a while - a gentleman on a heavy aluminium 'trecking' bike, replete with suspension forks, SON dynamo, Busch und Muller lights, and vast panniers, well stuffed. He was heading west towards Ireland, but in his own time; he asked my advice about whether to stop at Gatehouse that night or try to make it to Newton Stewart. I left him cycling happily, but as I sat at my cafe table sipping my chocolate I saw him arrive in the town.

He'd have been, maybe, early seventies.

Today being an absolutely glorious day, Andrew chapped on my door late morning to scrounge a cup of tea; and as he was riding back to Dumfries I got my bike out and kept him company. As we climbed the hill from Dalbeattie over to Southwick we encountered a gentleman on an elderly red Peugeot step-through roadster, with an old epicyclic hub which I doubt had more than three gears. He told us to go on, because he would have to stop and walk; but as we were taking photographs at the top he came back up to us, having ridden the whole hill.

He was, he said, eighty, and had two artificial hips and one artificial knee. You can see him in the background of that photo, behind me.

Andrew joked with me later that when I'm eighty I'll still be cycling the hills of Galloway on a black carbon Dolan, with moustache handlebars as my only concession to decrepitude.

I hope he's right. On the road up to Bridge of Ken there's a wee roadside shrine to a cyclist who died there, of a heart attack, in, I think, his seventies. I always stop and pay him my respects. I can think of no better way to go.