May 2, 2014

So, our first proper day of cycling back in the UK.  The weather has been exactly as it has been for the past couple of weeks in Spain – cloudy and cool, around 15 degrees.  It suits us perfectly actually.  After several days off the bikes hanging around waiting to catch the ferry we’ve lost our rhythm completely and the terrain today is not at all the sort to get it back again.  In fact, if we’d had our rhythm it would have been the sort of terrain to destroy it – a continual succession of short, sharp hills, not long but with steep gradients.  We were either crawling up in bottom gear or plummeting down at breakneck speed, over and over again.  We even broke our all time maximum speed on the touring bikes with a downhill run of 57.8 kilometres/hour and that was using the brakes – no idea how fast we would have gone without the brakes.  The problem is that there are a lot of manholes and grates in the road which all seem to be set into holes which nearly break the bikes in two when you hit them at speed going downhill.  Cycling on the wrong side of the road feels a bit alien and the road signs in miles keep catching me out.  I can immediately envisage how far away somewhere is in kilometres, but not in miles and I keep thinking places are nearer than they actually are.

Once we left the last few straggling villages on the edge of Plymouth, the countryside opens out into rolling green hills.  The typical Devon lanes have high banks each side of the road with hedges on top, making a green corridor to travel through.  The banking is covered in Bluebells and Primroses, a real treat to see.  There are a fair few cars and lorries on the road which also take a bit of getting used to, but, on the whole, they give us enough room.  We reach a village on the edge of the Dartmoor National Park, where we stop at a tea-shop – tea and cream cake – yum!   One or two people ask us if we have come far and are startled by our answer.  After setting off again the countryside soon opens out completely as we take the road straight across the middle of Dartmoor.  It is a typical bleak moorland landscape with the road continuing uphill and downhill, the only company for miles around being the sheep and the ponies that live out on the moors.  We pass the famous prison in the middle of the moor and keep heading for Mortonhampstead, where we indulge in a scones and clotted cream in another tea shop – at this rate we’ll be getting back heavier than when we started out.  We’re not exactly full of energy at this stage but we really want to make it to Exeter and so we keep going, to be met by our second 16% gradient climb of the day.  This was not the steepest gradient we encountered all day, there was a 20% gradient warning sign on another hill, but fortunately for us we were going down and not up.

We arrive in Exeter just before 7pm and find a hotel near the city centre – this time an independent old style place, rather than a chain hotel and the price is the same as last night.  Seems prices have risen since we were last here and I have underestimated the cost for this part of the tour – better stop eating all those cream teas and save some money or hope for that tropical sunshine and the opportunity to camp.