clairedavieswriter

Today I finally bade farewell to the Devon hills and their Cornish cousins, but not before they’d had the last laugh, with a rookie error involving insufficient forward momentum and feet attached to pedals. Luckily, the high earth bank beside the road (see below, assuming the right photo appears) meant I didn’t topple too far, and all that was injured was my pride. Moral of the story: if you stop at the bottom of a hill to take a picture, when you get back on, pedal faster.

It was a misty start, but the forecast rain never materialised.

Between Taunton and Bridgwater I followed the canal which in days gone by would have been busy with barges taking bricks, iron and tiles from Bristol to the sea.

Amazingly, I’m still on National Cycle Network route 3, which I’ve followed all the way from Land’s End. Apart from the aberration south of Bude (see Day 4 – ‘30% hill’), and the odd occasion where it has sent me on a massive detour to avoid 100 yards of main road, it has been consistently well signposted and brilliant at finding ingenious ways round major obstacles, like the M5 and canal at Bridgwater.

My salubrious lunch stop today…

… had a hidden catch. Moral of this story: if you find what looks like a large thorn in your tyre, don’t pull it out.

Luckily, it was the front tyre, which is a lot easier to get at, and I managed to fix it All By Myself.

After that, it was a rapid 20k zigzagging westwards across the Somerset Levels to Berrow, just north of Burnham-on-Sea. I was ready to stop, but pleased to report that neither the legs nor the posterior were complaining too much. Tomorrow: Bristol.