June 7th - Brockville, Ontario (BST -5hrs)

As we were packing our bikes to leave, my mobile phone rang. Odd, I thought, that my aunt should be calling me. Surely, Mum would have told her that John and I were travelling …

It was bad news from home. My mother, probably my number one Blog fan, had been rushed into hospital. “She told me not to tell you and Sarah”, Margaret Anne said, “But I thought you ought to know”. I rang the hospital. It was not a reassuring conversation. A distinctly sickly-sounding nurse told me that, as it was Sunday, Mum would not be seen by a specialist until tomorrow.

For now, there was nothing John and I could do. We just made as good time as possible to our next destination, Beeton, Ontario. Thank heavens we were staying with friends.

It was about 6.30pm by the time we arrived. We overshot the driveway by a couple of hundred yards, and discovered that we had the wrong house number. The phone rang again. “Your mother is having emergency surgery tonight.”

Not the news we wanted but, at least, she wasn’t lying on a trolley in a passage somewhere, still waiting to see a doctor.

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