Day 3 after spending the night in the relative luxury of a Premier Inn in exeter, day 3 was supposed to be an easier day. However, my bike had developed a problem with the bottom bracket which involved a trip to three bike shops in Exeter before I discovered the problem was merely a dodgy spacer. This meant by mid day we were still in Exeter with 70 miles to go! We hit the road but never made up the time limping into cheddar late with just enough time to raid the tescos metro for pasties and cold pasta before it closed.
Day 4 and it was Ian's turn for the cycling gods to frown upon him. It became apparent that his front derailleur and shifter hadn't been fitted properly by the bike shop he'd bought it from. Thankfully, cheddar cycles fitted it in for a quick overhaul there and then and we left by about mid day again, well behind schedule. After about three miles a wasp flew into my helmet and stung me on the forehead. I did manage to kill the swine in retribution though. We followed the Strawberry Line out of cheddar which is a disused railway line, one of the highlights was a 100 or so meter long tunnel without any lighting! Very scary cycling in the pitch black, especially when you could here things scurrying to the left and right of you in the darkness... We continued following the cycle route however, being clever, I had plotted a short cut over a hill. We soon realised why this 'short cut' was not included in the official route as there was what I believe was at least a 35% descent on the other side. It started shallow then just got steeper and steeper along a quite twisty single track road. it was basically impossible to stop. It appeared that the local council had inadvertently tarmaced a cliff and called it a road. I had my brakes on full, still doing about 10 mph when Richard came steaming past me, his metal cleats in his shoes literally sparking along the road as he tried to stop. Anna and I managed to find a nice soft bank to ride into, and ian disappeared put of sight down, to what we assumed was his doom. However he managed to grab a tree or something and stop.
We rode along the A40 towards Brecon, the scenery at the twilight when we arrived was stunning. Although a main trunk road at this time of the evening we basically had a 10 mile descent all to ourselves.
Day 5 started with us meeting some very friendly miniature horse type creatures. We then had a stop in Hay on Wye, a quick panini and a scout round town and back on the road. We made good progress and rode to Ludlow by mid afternoon, we decided to push on for our hotel thinking we could smash the last 30 miles, this was a mistake. i quickly bonked and food and water dried up after about 10 miles. my right knee decided to start hurting with 8 miles to go and i had an agonising crawl into our hotel. I've iced it, stretched it and deep heated it and hopefully we will be okay for tomorrow... Fingers crossed
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