summerdays
Cycling in the sun
- Location
- Bristol
I thought I would do a little write up of my first tour so here goes.
We didn't do tons of preparations other than buying ourselves some rear panniers (Ortliebs as I was fed up of getting my gear wet when commuting), and the sustrans map of the route. Mr Summerdays decided to do some tinkering with his bike before setting off, spent all Sunday trying to put it right - end result a quick trip to the LBS to fix it on the Monday.
We set off to the train station nervously but actually it all went very smoothly, the guard told us which end of the platform to go to and we were off on our journey. Changed at Exeter, and discovered that on the next train we hadn't got bungies to stop the bikes falling over. Arrived in Barnestaple, and quickly booked our nights accommodation and then set off to cycle to Ilfracombe.
I choose the route - it was really up and down, steep and within 5 miles I was walking up some of the hills thinking what had I let myself in for. At that stage I seriously questioned my ability to do it. It was an exhilarating ride down into Ilfracombe - although I did think about cheating and not going to down to the harbour to find the start. By this stage it was 4pm so we had 2 - 3 hours to ride back to Barnestaple. The book described the hill out of Barnestaple as "tough" but actually it was just nice and steady in comparison to our trip over to Ilfracombe and I began to think I could do it after all.
We enjoyed the trip back to Barnestaple, which we found was a town with a lot of cycle paths. I decided that it would be a good place to cycle with kids perhaps.
Next day we headed out along the Tarka Trail, with its sculptures:
We had a quick wander around Bideford, then on to Great Torrington for lunch and ended the day at Oakhampton. It was the only day that we saw any number of cyclists and then mostly near to the cycle hire at Bideford. We had seen the weather forecast for showers but somehow we managed to dodge them all, just the occasional drizzle. We managed to stay at a B&B with a cyclist doing the LEJOG who made an interesting breakfast companion.
We found these: (Do you think they are bike racks ... if so I would love one in my garden)
We woke to sunshine looking out of our B&B window towards Dartmoor, by breakfast it had clouded over, and by the time we set off it was lightly raining. Half a mile later the torrential stuff started, so we found a bike shop and bought overshoes for Mr Summerdays. We made very slow progress and only made it to Lydford Gorge for lunch (and an escape from the rain).
After lunch we continued, with the odd bit of missed signs or some that confused us:
Brentor church in the rain!
but Mr Summerdays ended up getting very wet and cold so we stopped early in Tavistock. Unfortunatly our B&B whilst very welcoming wasn't entirely suited to soaked cyclists - a cream room, complete with cream carpet - though we were given a plastic bin liner to put our bags down on.
The final day needed to link over to the road route, and so headed out to Whitchurch Down although it wasn't brilliantly signed, though nice cycling.
We joined the Plym trail at Clearbrook which our bikes were not suited for ... and managed to travel at 2 mph for the next 200 m or so.
After that the speed gradually increased. Then the route lead us around some of the more decript parts of Plymouth again not always signed very well and did I really want a tour of the industrial parts? Or barriers that force you to remove your panniers:
Then there was the getting back to the station were we ran into difficulties in getting the bikes onto the trains (apparently you must book your bike on more than an hour before the train departure time from Plymouth, but the woman on the desk didn't give us a reservation despite being asked for one).
The weather was nowhere near as bad as I had worried it would be, so I'm glad we stuck to the original plan. Would I do a tour again? Yes definately, I imagine about the same sort of length next year after the grandparents recover from childminding duty.
I did find I had a tendancy to go wrong / miss signs when going fast downhill whereas when crawling up them I was desparately looking around for a way that wasn't straight uphill.
We brought back stuff still wet from that day... how do you cope with soaking wet clothes that don't manage to get dry overnight - gloves, socks, shoes, t-shirt etc
I think I see more cyclists daily in Bristol than I did on each day on the tour.
We didn't do tons of preparations other than buying ourselves some rear panniers (Ortliebs as I was fed up of getting my gear wet when commuting), and the sustrans map of the route. Mr Summerdays decided to do some tinkering with his bike before setting off, spent all Sunday trying to put it right - end result a quick trip to the LBS to fix it on the Monday.
We set off to the train station nervously but actually it all went very smoothly, the guard told us which end of the platform to go to and we were off on our journey. Changed at Exeter, and discovered that on the next train we hadn't got bungies to stop the bikes falling over. Arrived in Barnestaple, and quickly booked our nights accommodation and then set off to cycle to Ilfracombe.
I choose the route - it was really up and down, steep and within 5 miles I was walking up some of the hills thinking what had I let myself in for. At that stage I seriously questioned my ability to do it. It was an exhilarating ride down into Ilfracombe - although I did think about cheating and not going to down to the harbour to find the start. By this stage it was 4pm so we had 2 - 3 hours to ride back to Barnestaple. The book described the hill out of Barnestaple as "tough" but actually it was just nice and steady in comparison to our trip over to Ilfracombe and I began to think I could do it after all.
We enjoyed the trip back to Barnestaple, which we found was a town with a lot of cycle paths. I decided that it would be a good place to cycle with kids perhaps.
Next day we headed out along the Tarka Trail, with its sculptures:
We had a quick wander around Bideford, then on to Great Torrington for lunch and ended the day at Oakhampton. It was the only day that we saw any number of cyclists and then mostly near to the cycle hire at Bideford. We had seen the weather forecast for showers but somehow we managed to dodge them all, just the occasional drizzle. We managed to stay at a B&B with a cyclist doing the LEJOG who made an interesting breakfast companion.
We found these: (Do you think they are bike racks ... if so I would love one in my garden)
We woke to sunshine looking out of our B&B window towards Dartmoor, by breakfast it had clouded over, and by the time we set off it was lightly raining. Half a mile later the torrential stuff started, so we found a bike shop and bought overshoes for Mr Summerdays. We made very slow progress and only made it to Lydford Gorge for lunch (and an escape from the rain).
After lunch we continued, with the odd bit of missed signs or some that confused us:
Brentor church in the rain!
but Mr Summerdays ended up getting very wet and cold so we stopped early in Tavistock. Unfortunatly our B&B whilst very welcoming wasn't entirely suited to soaked cyclists - a cream room, complete with cream carpet - though we were given a plastic bin liner to put our bags down on.
The final day needed to link over to the road route, and so headed out to Whitchurch Down although it wasn't brilliantly signed, though nice cycling.
We joined the Plym trail at Clearbrook which our bikes were not suited for ... and managed to travel at 2 mph for the next 200 m or so.
After that the speed gradually increased. Then the route lead us around some of the more decript parts of Plymouth again not always signed very well and did I really want a tour of the industrial parts? Or barriers that force you to remove your panniers:
Then there was the getting back to the station were we ran into difficulties in getting the bikes onto the trains (apparently you must book your bike on more than an hour before the train departure time from Plymouth, but the woman on the desk didn't give us a reservation despite being asked for one).
The weather was nowhere near as bad as I had worried it would be, so I'm glad we stuck to the original plan. Would I do a tour again? Yes definately, I imagine about the same sort of length next year after the grandparents recover from childminding duty.
I did find I had a tendancy to go wrong / miss signs when going fast downhill whereas when crawling up them I was desparately looking around for a way that wasn't straight uphill.
We brought back stuff still wet from that day... how do you cope with soaking wet clothes that don't manage to get dry overnight - gloves, socks, shoes, t-shirt etc
I think I see more cyclists daily in Bristol than I did on each day on the tour.
