May 6, 2014

The weather forecast has promised us sunshine for the morning but showers later on, so we have an incentive to pedal hard to beat the rain.  The directions we have been given and the drive along the route out of Bristol that we did yesterday work perfectly so that we ride straight to the road we want.  Today we have more opportunity to get off the busier roads and to ride some back lanes.  We’ll be reaching the Cotswolds today and so more hilly terrain.  Anne has packed us cheese and home-made pickle sandwiches and a variety of cakes – she should provide the supplies to the Tour de France because we absolutely fly up the hills.

We’re starting to pass through pretty stone villages, the cottages covered with wisteria and clematis in full flower. Coach loads of tourists are walking around some of the villages – a big group of Japanese tourists stand and stare as we free-wheel down a big hill through one village – they obviously haven’t seen anything quite like us before.

All day the sky is very blue dotted with white clouds, like the sky at the start of ‘The Simpsons’, but now and again a black cloud appears and we even get a few big, fat rain drops but nothing to worry about.  We are hoping to reach the village of Burford today as that will leave us two reasonable days of cycling to reach Nottingham.  We reach Cirencester in good time and decide that we’ll easily have time to cycle on to Burford, just under 30 kilometres away.  Unfortunately, our luck with the weather runs out just a few kilometres short of Burford, the heavens open and we arrive at our destination soaked to the skin – all our nice clean things wet and muddy.  The evening is spent rotating wet gloves, jackets, helmets, shoes and clothes on the heated towel rail to try to get them dry for tomorrow.  Even though it looks as though it is going to rain all day tomorrow, there is nothing worse than putting wet stuff on at the start of the day.