May 15, 2014

Our fears of a freezing night were confirmed but we survive. The morning sun, however, is warm even at 8am. It’s going to be a scorcher today. We are feeling relaxed and take our time over breakfast before packing everything on the bikes. Today we’ll be cycling most of the day across fenland once we get to the other side of Peterborough. We’re looking forward to some flat cycling after crossing the hilly counties of the Cotswolds, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.

If you look on a map you will soon realise that the distance between Yarwell Mill and Ely is nowhere near 87 kilometres – it is actually about 55 kilometres or so taking account of using winding back-roads. The extra distance is accounted for by the appalling quality of the sign-posting, or to be more accurate, the non-existent sign-posting in the district of Peterborough. Even worse is the road development in the area, turning all the routes into fast dual carriageways with no provision at all for bikes. As we try to find our way we have to make an educated guess which road to take at a crossroad with no signs. We select a normal, but busy single carriageway road going in the right direction. We quickly find ourselves travelling onto a dual carriageway, but with no other options available we press ahead. Before long we’re being drawn into a web of mayhem, with huge roundabouts where the only options are motorways or more dual carriageways. We select the least busy looking but then find ourselves drawn along into roads-works where the lanes have been reduced down to one narrow lane with concrete blocks lining the sides. There is insufficient room for even a car to overtake a bike and so all the traffic, lorries, buses, cars, the lot, are moving along behind us at a crawl. We can feel the eyes of irate drivers burning into the back of our necks and at the first opportunity pull into a gap which takes us into the actual road works in the middle of the road. We eventually extract ourselves by walking back with the bikes in the area of the road works to the previous roundabout and pushing the bikes over grass verges and wasteland until we find another road. An hour later we manage to get onto a cycle track going vaguely where we want to go. Phew! However, our problems don’t end there as a short distance along the cycle track, that too is diverted onto a temporary track to facilitate yet more road works. More pushing of the bikes along a muddy path across fields, before we rejoin the original track. Phew again! But no, although we get back on our intended route we can’t find a back-road we’ve identified on the map – it seems that it is now disused and has become a farm track. We end up doing a huge loop adding yet more unnecessary kilometres.

Eventually, we stop for a drink at a bar and a local cyclist uses his mobile ‘phone to show us a short-cut across the fens straight to Ely. As we arrive at Ely the first thing we see is a road-side motel – the first lucky find of the day. Tomorrow can only get better – can’t it?