Day 4

Sleeping location: Beambridge Inn, Wellington
Distance (km today/total): 92 / 342
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1250 / 4800
Sheep to car ratio: 50:1
Day in three words: Exmoor & up yonder*

*The ampersand is a symbol

An easier day, but one which still involved a lot of punchy climbs and one from sea level up to almost 500m.  The LEJoG team decided to go a more direct/flat route than initially planned, but I decided to stick to the original route as I fancied checking out Exmoor. In the end I was very glad I did because it was great and they still ended up doing as much overall climb and distance as me, but on much busier roads (haha).

I went down the rest of the Tarka Trail with them to Barnstaple, then started the long ascent up to the top(ish) of the moors on my own.  Stopped at a fantastic pub called the Poltimore Arms on the way up. The owner Steve was great value, the place was about 600 years old and has no mains electricity, gas or phone.  Sadly it was too early for a pint so I had a coffee and a good chat with Steve and his son Alfie. He wouldn’t even accept any money for the coffee, said to pay it forward to someone who needs it more. Great guy, great pub.  The top of Exmoor was amazing, nothing but me and sheep and really fun undulating roads.  Got drenched on the way down but the area already had more than enough credit in the bank.

Dad and I took a bit of time this evening to go see his dad (my grandad) in his care home. He was asleep as usual but it was good to see him before I head off.  Tomorrow I’ll split off from the LEJoGers around Taunton and head east towards London solo. Not really looking forward to picking up the rest of my camping gear and increasing Maggie’s weight from 1 tonne to 2 tonnes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 38

Sleeping location: By a babbling brook at 1600m, a few km east of the 7 Rila Lakes Lift, Bulgaria Distance (km today/total): 63 / 3792 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1600 / 31400 The main chunk of the climb up here: 800m in 12km Day in three words: Rila high up* *Pun works best in a Yorkshire accent Firstly, an important update on the egg situation from yesterday. It turned out 6 (SIX) of them had broken, so breakfast was scaled down to bread and cheese as I was in no mood for eggs by now. I broke camp in a leisurely fashion again, perhaps too leisurely as it was 10.30 by the time I finally set off. On the way back to the road I had a really funny incident with a herd of goats/sheep and their shepherd*. He was trying to get them to follow him but when they saw me coming along the track they all froze. He kept whistling and I kept trying to hide but they refused to move for a few minutes. Eventually I decided to move forward in the hope that it would “push” them towards him, b...
Read more

Day 152

Sleeping location: Yogofe Hotel, Kombolcha, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 68 / 11064 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1300 / 79800 Restorative cakes eaten: 4 Day in three words: DON’T TRUST DIRT I woke up at 6am needing the toilet, and by this point the cries of the birds and some nearby fishermen made getting back to sleep impossible. We were both very tired and (in my case anyway) a mite hungover. Also, our Ethiopian SIM cards had both been cut off at midnight and we had no internet any more. After getting ourselves together with lots of coffee and some food we set off straight onto the steep rocky track back to the main road, which was a good start to proceedings. After a few km on the main road we turned off to take advantage of a komoot-recommended shortcut which cut out a lot of distance and climb. It was on an “asphalt road”, but was actually on a stony track, but the gradients and surface didn't look too bad so we decided to give it a go. This went ok until 5...
Read more

Day 369 / 134

Date: 16 April 2023 Sleeping location: Sorgvry* House of Guests, Barrydale, South Africa Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 80  / 23137 / 8300 Estimated climb ( m  t oday/total/ tot a l   Part  2):  600  / 2211 00 / 103100 Stress levels: high Day in three words: Big ring day It was another calm, cool, clear day, but forecast to hot up later so we took breakfast (the usual mix of hot things and continental things, but Alex wasn’t the best of chefs: 5/10 with a mark deducted for more minor racism) early and tried to get away quickly. The landscape and riding was fairly similar all day, gently rolling road, big and empty, through big and empty scrubland. There were rocky peaks in the distance and small ones here and there, plus occasional herds of impala/springbok in the distance, one of which ran sort of alongside us for a few hundred metres. With no headwind, major hills or bad road surface some fast riding was both possible and fun so I kept Maggie in ...
Read more