Slept okish – but was woken by the torrential rain – nice.
Morning had broken, and our hearts when we saw the stupid, stupid weather. It was wet. And windy. And we had to have a little chef.
After a latish breakfast we set off in the rain on the final leg. This one was only a small jaunt around Dartmoor to Plymouth.
We got wet at the beginning, and in the middle, but not at the end. The ride from Okehampton is a good one, “mostly” downhill, with some hard climbs, but in general you are on tracks and it is pretty flat. Obviously by this time, every little climb is more tiring than you would expect, and if it hadn’t been for the rain, it would have been almost pleasurable.
We didn’t stop for lunch today, as we expected to get to Plymouth for lunch time, and we almost had a sit down for a coffee, but the serving wench was most put out that we were wet, so we ate in the street. At one point it said “13.5 miles to Plymouth”, 5 miles later we say a sign saying 13 miles to Plymouth, but at that point it was nearly downhill all the way. We crossed some amazing bridges, and went through some really eerie tunnels, with mist and darkness that even Marrsys super bright lights couldn’t penetrate.
I was loving today, the sun came out, and the last 13 miles were a joy mostly great road, and you could really get a spin up – I even overtook navman at one point – much to his disgust.
We got into Plymouth and had one last surprising hill to crawl up, and then it was down the harbor for a beer, and to let Brend change in the darkest toilet – in the world…
Sian came to pick me up for our trip to Dartmouth, and the guys were off to get trains home. We had cycled around 170 miles and gone up 11,000 ft or so, half of Everest or three Snowdons, some of the scenery was epic, some of the hills steep, and some of the weather wet – we had pints and pies and good times…
Big thanks as always to the team – hopefully we’ll get a few new stragglers next year
Day 3 – Strava track is here