May 8, 2014

Only the insane would venture out on a bike today in this weather. So, what should we do? Torrential rain is forecast for the whole day…..and tomorrow…..and probably the next day too. If we wait another day, we’ll be sitting around with nothing to do all day and tomorrow may be just as bad. So we get out our secret weapon against the weather, not yet seen on this tour, the bin bag. Good for keeping the body dry, although the rest of us is going to suffer.

Fortunately, we have a back-road route for today, very much like yesterday. The traffic is light, although some cars just don’t seem to appreciate what it is like to be on a bike passed by a vehicle travelling at 50 mph throwing out a bow wave of water. Progress is slow as we’re going up and down hills all the time and we can’t just race downhill like we normally do as there are big puddles of water and mud on the road. Despite the conditions we’re not unhappy; the trick is to keep moving all the time as then you generate enough heat to keep warm. So, no coffee stops this morning. No photos either. The Tour of Britain for women is in this area today and, in fact, we just missing seeing it by only about 5 minutes – we just get to see the police bikes and cars after the peloton has passed.

We keep going until nearly 2pm when we have to stop for lunch as we’re starving hungry. Fortunately, we find a village store which has sandwiches and a coffee machine, but after only a couple of minutes of standing in our wet things we’re shivering with cold. It feels as if we’ll never get warm again.  When we do get going again, we soon get back into our stride and warm up slowly.  The food has re-boosted our legs and we’re making better progress until we reach a short section of a busier road.  There is more heavy traffic, lorries and buses, flying along throwing up spray – not nice at all.  We spot a MacDonalds sign on a roundabout ahead and pull in with the idea of taking a quick break before we see that there is also a hotel – tempting.  We consult the map and assess how long it will take us to reach my parents’ house – we can do it today, but we have at least three more hours riding to get there.  We decide to take the sensible option and check-in leaving us with a run tomorrow of about the same distance as today.