Sunshine, slow progress and Ronald
Trip Start
Jul 08, 2008
1
14
16
Trip End
Jul 25, 2008
Crediton,
England,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Myself and Phil went ahead as Carl had yet another puncture (number 6 or 7) and resolved not to stop until Taunton. We reached Taunton on target and were on our way to Morrison's for a tea and scone when one of Phil's spokes went again. Lucky we were in Taunton so we asked and found a good bike shop but it was going to take a few hours to repair. This was the last thing we needed. We sat in Morrison's and went for a walk to try find a new USB camera cable for me but it wasn't possible to find one for less than 15 quid (for a 1 pound cable). We didn't have lunch as e still had all the steak and stuff from the bbq from the night before to eat.
Carl set off from Taunton before us thinking we would catch him up. It was after 3 by the time Phil and myself got going. It was going well till about 10 minutes in when I just lost the will to live. The energy just went from my legs and I realized I was paying for the lack of lunch. While after stopping and stuffing myself with licorice allsorts and anything else I could find Phil called and it turned out he had exactly the same experience a few hundred yards away so we met up and stuffed ourselves with steak butties. It really was bizarre just going all fuzzy like that. The weirdest part of the bizarreness was that we passed a Greenacre campsite with Adults Only on the sign and had both thought in our intoxicated low sugar state that somehow we had just done a massive loop around and ended up where we had begun the day again.
Carl was awaiting our arrival at McDonalds in Tiverton. And what a surprise it was to find that Team Ronald was there with Ronald McDonald. Phil and myself immediately got our pictures taken with Ronald. We then tried to push onto Oakhampton but only got as far as a bizarre little place called Crediton. Getting to Crediton we took a wrong turn which meant we had to cut across on some little c and d roads which was one of the best parts of the journey to date. The quiet roads, views and houses were all lovely. Crediton was a weird cross between Devon and industrial England; to this day I have no idea what people do there. We stocked up on some pasta in the local store and cycled to a little campsite a few miles out of town. The campsite was by a coarse fishing lake. There were no facilities apart from a tap and toilet but there were lots of fisherman camped out for the night with beds and little buzzers to wake them up if they got a bite. We brewed up our pasta and Carl shared out some white wine for us and washed ourselves down by the tap.
Miles 63.17
Average 11.2
Hours on bike 5.38
Max speed 34
Total distance 902.86.
Over the hills
