LEJOG Blog

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday was as hard a day's cycling as one could ever hope to meet; today's was a dawdle by comparison. Our attitude had changed as well. In spite of eating breakfast at 8am, we were not away until 10. A good deal of that can be accounted for by our hosts: former Essex residents (Radwinter) whose son did the end to end about sixteen years ago in eight days. Dad operated the support vehicle - so 130 miles per day, although extreme, is doable for a fit teenager without luggage who stuck to A-roads nearly all the way.

Apart from an early walk up the steep hill from Chulmleigh, we had a very steady day's cycling. Navigation was straightforward as the first 19 miles into Tiverton were along a B-road. So direct was it that my right leg became sunburnt, while the left did not. Finding the canal tow-path was also easy, but good old Sustrans - the gates were locked and there was no chance of getting a fully laiden tandem through the labyrinth barriers. After some exploration and asking passers-by, we found the canal basin and we were away. It was not fast cycling but at least we were free from hills for ten miles or more. Interesting too: at one point, a large fish swirled on the surface and later we saw a beautiful little perch.

On leaving the tow-path, we kept to Sustrans route 3 and it led us quite a dance. The road signs were all pretty unhelpful, but in the village of Greenham, we found a man with a 1:50000 OS map. That sorted us out for a while, but around Langford Budville, the doubts set in once again. We muddled through, but I am not sure even now which roads we took.

On reaching Nynehead, we found ourselves climbing a delightful little sandstone gorge and not very long afterwards, we were in Taunton. To think that we were here a few mornings ago wondering when the train would set off.

I have decided that I do not like Taunton. To an extent, this is self-inflicted because I had failed to plot our route in sufficient detail. I asked a couple of 'old geezers' or whatever the Somerset equivalent is, and that was no help. We were looking for the Taunton and Bridgewater canal whose tow-path was going to take us east to Creech St Michael but instead we found the M5 and its exceptionally unpleasant junction with the A38. We had no choice but to take on this maxi-roundabout and finally found our way through Ruishton.

Even on arriving in North Curry, the guesthouse eluded us for a while but we were finally rewarded with an elegant Victorian red-brick former doctor's residence.

Our bike was stowed away, baths enjoyed, washing handed to the landlady and then we were off to the pub. We had the restaurant to ourselves as there was a noisy and inaccurate quiz going on in the bar. At one point, the quizmaster told everyone that the circumference of a circle was πr² and nobody challenged him.

When we got back to our digs, I dared to turn the television on to sneak a look at the weather forecast for the next week. It's looking good so far if it isn't tempting providence too much to say so.