7th April
Lyndon House, St Neot, has to be one of the finest B&Bs I have experienced. The room was comfortable and wonderfully appointed, I enthused about the shower yesterday, our breakfasts of cereal, fruit compôte, yoghurt with scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and toast washed down with lashings of tea from a beautiful service while we were admiring the view across the valley set us up for the day.
And what a day it was. There were more hills than I knew existed anywhere. We climbed and we climbed and as we climbed... we got off the bike and pushed. On the smallest, steepest, most remote road, a BMW followed us up the hills (we were pushing the bike) and kindly advised us that we were meant to be riding it. I hope his piles give him ten years' ceaseless agony.
The road to Minions and Minions itself are absolutely glorious. To be viewed on a cloudless April morning... I'm enthusing too much.
It took us an age to reach Launceton. It was only about 17 miles, but our overall slow speed and frequent stops meant that we were there just before 1pm. We decided that the next pub would be lunch and it was, but not until we had crossed the Tamar. That momentous event occurred at about 1:20. We finally arrived at the pub in Bratton Clovelly at about 3pm. We had sandwiches.
From there to Okehampton, where we arrived just as the greengrocer's and coffee shop were closing, but we did get a few bananas and some carrot cake.
Again we climbed out of Okehampton and this time, on the rebound, we reached our highest speed ever: 44.9mph.
After we reached North Tawton, there were only another ten or so miles to go and it was touch-and-go whether we would need to refit the front light. We finally arrived at the Red Lion in Chulmleigh at about 8:15, about eleven hours after we set off. Seven hours and forty minutes were cycling time.
[ Entry posted at: Sat 07 Apr 2007 22:42:30 BST | 0 comment(s)... | Cat: Cycling ]