April 28, 2013

We haven’t slept at all well. We were too cold in the night even wearing our clothes inside the sleeping bags.  Every other night we’ve camped on the trip so far we’ve been so hot we’ve had to sleep on top of the sleeping bags.

We’re really slow getting packed up, hampered by the wind, which hasn’t stopped blowing hard all night and looks set to spoil our day today.  There is much less climbing on the route today than yesterday – we get no shelter from the wind at all.  Normally I ride in front all the time, mainly because I do the way-finding, but today we have to take turns on the front as it is such hard work making any progress.  We get no opportunity to look around and enjoy the ride, it is just a case of keeping our heads down and pushing hard on the pedals – not much fun at all.  We only cover 50 kms in the time we should have covered 80 kms, so we decide to call it a day and find a hotel.  The only one available is a luxury five-star spa hotel, not our sort of thing at all.  However, they are very accommodating with the bikes and so we find ourselves experiencing a complete contrast to last night.  We plan a late breakfast and a short ride tomorrow as we are near to our cottage, where we plan to take a few days off before meeting up with Ken’s brother at the weekend.  Hopefully, this will give the weather time to change for the better before we continue onwards.