Stats for the day: Miles: 72, Ft Climbed: 4100ish Calories: TBC Group Punctures: 2.5 (one was temp fixed) Beard Status: Thatch like in places. Undercarriage: Alive, if a little wounded.
Hello dear reader, another instalment of our rolling adventure for you, and this one is brought to you from Swansea, in a lovely hotel which had a cracking pool to surprise us with, even more of a surprise was that we arrived in time to use it! A nice treat for some sore limbs.
In stark contrast to our somewhat tasty surroundings tonight, our day started as many have this trip: in a Travelodge, 2 rooms between 6 people. We’ve seen a few of them this week, and they are all scarily similar but it appeared they had torn up the rule book for the Pembroke Dock location and, perhaps in a moment of creative clarity,gone crazy. This one had a blue bath panel. I know!Madness.
After recovering from the shock of our designer surroundings we loaded up with a fine local breakfast and got our sorry selves into shape. Every day seems to take longer to get up to speed now, with knees in particular complaining heavily for the first few miles, but once we get going and despite already 7 days in the saddle, the mood lifts quickly and we can make good progress. The body continues to amaze me.
We travelled east for the first time in 8 days and zipped along the first few miles before dropping down to the coast, through Tenby and along some stunning beaches. After our couple of days heads down smashing along ‘A’ roads it was nice to take in a few view again, but I must admit we were all a little envious of the guys sat on the beach with a beer, particularly as they were liable to get a tan that didn’t make them look like a liquorice allsort. We have comedy lines all over the place now.
After a gentle couple of miles we headed out of the villages and into was set to be the theme for the next hour or so- mega hills. We had a couple of long 14 & 16% gradients to deal with, and in the blazing sun it made for very hard work. You know its tough when the sweat is stopping you seeing through your sunnies! After every climb we’d find ourselves descending into the next village before starting again and pretty quickly we realised we needed to change the route if we were to get through the day ok, not least because we were struggling to av 7mph including the descents. The going was certainly ‘araf’ as our Welsh friends would say, so we went back to what we’d been good at recently: hooning down main roads.
We got a solid rate going, with Andy even managing to sit in the slipstream of a tractor at about 25 mph for a good few miles, before we had a slightly scary moment when we realised we had lost Zoe of the back of our Train, and we couldn’t see her at all. We’d been up in the high 20s at the time, and flying down a hill so we were a long way down the road which happened to be the A40- not a good place to have a problem. Thankfully it wasn’t anything more serious than a puncture and once a nice AA bloke pulled over to let us know she was ok and just a little up the road we were able to relax a bit, still it was a reminder that we are by know means done yet.
After that there was a huge amount to report, other than a series of little mechanical niggles that we had to fix en route (The trusted steeds seem to be feeling the strain a little too now.) and lots more hills. 4100 ft today. (That’s 3.5 Empire State Buildings Google tells me.) We rolled into a base for the night fairly early, and in decent shape. It’s ridiculous that so many feet of climbing and 70 miles felt like a ‘short’ day. I’m not sure I’ll ever be in a position to say that again.
What I am sure of though is that tomorrow, our last really long day, is going to be nasty: Ilfracombe to Newquay is 102 miles and very hilly, we have been warned. Bring it on. I shall update you on how that ended up going tomorrow, on our last night!
Now, one more thing; After yesterdays nice moment where you let us off for not riding into the ferry dock itself, I feel I can be more open with you about things, starting from…now. The ferry we were due to get across to Devon from our base here isn’t running as they are refurbing the boats, so we have to drive round to our start point. Not ideal but it doesn’t alter our milage and its required if we are to make it to tackle the other mountain that will be made of email on Monday. I knew you’d understand, you're the best.
Right, off to bed with me, I’ll try and drop some pics into this post tomorrow morning.
Over and out.
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