The rain and wind woke most of us up that night. The other people were woken up by Andy W’s snoring. It was so bad that John got up in the middle of the night and went to find a different bed!
Conditions in Dartmoor were thick with mist and rain. I had to really take it easy costing down the hills for fear of sliding off the road.
Later that day once the rain had cleared up and the sun came out, for all of 5 minutes, we passed the same 2 lads in the garish orange t-shirts we saw on day 1. After climbing a really big hill, I pulled in for a quick drink when one of the lads stopped by us. He was doing Lejog also and was waiting for his friend to catch up because he had a slow puncture and had to keep pumping up his tyre every 15 mintutes. When John asked why he didn't just change the innter tube the lad replied that they didn't have any! Andy Q gave him a spare tube and some food too(they didn't have any left) and wished them well. Hats off to the lads, they were doing lejog raw, in 10 days, with no back up, no food and no spare inner tubes!
We extended the cycle a bit more that day so that we didn't have to drive back into Bristol city centre the following morning. We pulled into a pub and waited for Andy to take us to Cardiff where we would be staying with my mum.
On day 3
It was really great to see my mum and sample some of her home cooking. Needless to say we all ate really well that night.
We packed our bags and drove back from Cardiff to where we finished up yesterday, somewhere just outside of Bristol (Andy W will have it written down). The weather started bad and got worse. The rain and wind was hitting us straight on and was really impacting our progress. On average we were doing about 21km per hour. It was a case of heads down and tuck in behind each other to get out of the wind.
After a few hours the rain eased off and we all started to enjoy ourselves again. We passed through Button Oak which was a really beautiful forest on our way to Ironbridge. Ironbridge is incidentally named after the Ironbridge which was built there which kicked off the industrial revolution in the mid 17th century. We all stopped on the bridge to have a photo taken on until Konrad pointed out that the “Ironbridge” was 300 years old. Just at that moment Paulette and Steve (Andy Q’s parents) turned up and bought us all dinner.
After an excellent dinner at the local pub near to the youth hostel we were staying at, we said goodbye to Andy’s parents and soon after Dawn, who had come to take John and Konrad back to Manchester.
Day 4 - Ironbridge to Kirkby Lonsdale.
Andy and I had already done most of this route in a previous training ride so we were confident we could make it. We really pressed on today and made good time to Warrington.
Andy W was leaving us half way through the route and we were without support for a few hours until we met Becky. Andy did a fantastic job looking after all of us and getting that temperamental minibus working again. Without him I would have probably been still walking around Penzance trying to find a place to get my bike fixed. The ride through Warrington was long and tedious due to the thousands of round about there. We were glad to get past there.
We made it through and met up with Andy W’s parents – Joe and Paula. They had brought us tea and biscuits to keep us going and cheered us on.
The ride to Kirkby Lonsdale was stunning, I think it had the best scenery of all of the places we had been. My knees were playing up at this point and I was in a bit of pain so we eased up and and took it steady into Kirkby. When we arrived Becky was there in “the beast,” a large 4x4 which Lex donated to us for the remainder of the trip, complete with balloons and champagne celebrating the half way point in our trip. Jo (Becky's mum) cooked us the most amazing dinner. I think she said it was a South African dish called 'Bobotie'.
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