May 7, 2014

We don’t have any hopes for nice weather today – the forecast is for wind and rain all day and it looks like that is what we have when we look out of our hotel window.  The kit did dry out overnight so at least we’re starting off dry – we’ll see how long it lasts. 

The route today is entirely on back-roads, so, no traffic but lots more stopping and starting at every junction to consult the map and the compass, loads more steep hills and bad road surfaces – some roads are all patches and potholes and hardly any tarmac.  Nevertheless, we are in a more relaxed mood despite the slow progress.  Many of the roads are single tracks and the only traffic is a few farmers in their landrovers. When we’ve been on these types of road for a day or two we appreciate reaching a main road so we can make faster progress, but after having been on main roads for the past few days, we enjoy the relaxed pace of the back-roads – having a mixture of the two seems to be the key.

We ride up and over rolling hills all day – a patchwork of green and yellow fields early in the day and, later on, fields of green pasture surrounded by pale stone walls and dotted with sheep.  The roadside is lined with ancient trees – beech, oak and horse-chestnut – the wind whipping the branches around.  We can’t believe our luck in having the wind behind us most of the time; on the rare occasions we’re on a flat part of the road we can feel the wind pushing us along.  We’re dodging the rain pretty well too – now and then we shelter under the tree canopy to avoid the heaviest showers – but at the most we’re a bit damp and certainly not soaked like yesterday.  We keep passing through little stone villages that look too perfect to be real, a feeling that is reinforced by the lack of any inhabitants to be seen.  I guess the weather is keeping everyone inside.  We end the day in one of those picture-perfect villages and find accommodation in a pretty pub with a thatched roof; a room in the eaves with sloping floors that creak.