dartmoor

This was billed as a hard day, and I can vouch for that. After a nice relaxing breakfast-scrambled eggs on toast with pomegranite juice (give me a break..it's good for you!)- we headed for Tavistock. As Kevin had headed out before us, and Ben, Andy and I were waiting for Hunter, it meant we set a fast pace to catch up. By the time I got on Kevin's back wheel, the others had dropped me. The hills were tough, we were dropping down to the lowest gear to grind them out-all this before the first water stop!

Once we'd had the quota of jelly babies and a toilet stop we were off again-looking forward to a 300 metre climb onto the moor-it didn't disappoint. The hard climbs were broken up by routine stops-i think we were all finding it pretty tough.

Its bleak on the moor. And windy, but you don't really notice as you are struggling up hills. It really is hard graft. By this point both Hunter and I were having problems with our knees. Mine was really becoming sore-painkillers at the next stop then!

We got to the lunch stop early, and got food down us straight away. The wind picked up, so the windproof tops were donned so we didn't get too cold. Hot vegetable soup, pork pies, bread, cheese and tomatoes-standard fare. There was some maltloaf too-much needed. A bus-load of Dutch tourists pitched up and were expressing quite an interest in what we were doing-the dutch like their cycling it seems.

A quick trip down the hill to Moretonhampstead for another loo break (I'm not peeing in the middle of dartmoor in front of a bus load of dutch tourists.and sheep), and we then headed off for Exeter. I nearly took Blackburn Andy out as I wasn't looking at what I was doing (as usual).

Devon Knight was leading, as he has the local knowledge-i was just trying to coax out of him how many more climbs there were. There were a few as it turns out, and some quite nasty ones too! One of the last ones before Exeter just seemed to go on-it'd run to a corner which we would turn to see another steep gradient running on ahead,etc,etc. It can be quite demoralising, but Kevin and I stuck together and got through the hills no problems.

Once we got into exeter, Martin(Devon Knight), Hunter and Ivor had to head to the bike shop-Ivor had managed to bend the big chainring on his bike, and Hunter needed a water bottle. The rest of us cycled off for the last water stop of the day.

We cycled past the station which we'd stopped at on the way down and headed down the road to stop at Stoke Wood. So we've made some good progress. More jelly babies, bananas and cereal bars, and we got back on the road to Tiverton. We'd been told it was 9 miles, but it was probably more like the 12 we expected. We got a bit lost and went past the Blundells Prep school in Tiverton(looked very posh), and once we'd called the hotel and got our directions sorted, managed to double back to the hotel.

It looks pretty nice here. Got to go and get some food as we got in at about 3.40pm. The day was not the indicated 75 miles expected. Average speed dropped to 14.2mph, and max speed so far is 42.8mph. I'm not going for more than that-one of the earlier descents of the day found me almost kicked out of my seat at over 30mph, so I calmed it down. Ben is the downhill king at 78kmph (look it up!). I'm just glad I got here.

As Blackburn Andy remarked this morning on my yellow cycling top-'he"s got the leader's jersey on, that's confusing'. I don't tend to run at the front of the group, but then this really isn't a race.

Right I need food, and there is only so long you can wait.
Looking forward to tomorrow and Shipham hill before the lunch stop...8(