Yesterday was the last day of my 2 week Devon family/cycling holiday. We had great weather for most of the time that I was there and yesterday was no exception. I decided to make the most of it...
I set off in a big clockwise loop passing through Thorverton, Ottery St Mary, Otterton and Budleigh Salterton on the way to Exmouth.
I timed my arrival in Exmouth to be good for the ferry across the Exe estuary to Starcross. I had tried that once before only to discover that the ferry was not operating that day. This time, all went according to plan. I arrived with 5 minutes to spare, cycled round the corner to the mooring and... found a huge queue in front of me! The ferry boat is pretty small so I doubted that I would make it on board and I was not going to hang about for an hour to get on the next one. I consulted the Google A.I. bot which confidently told me that the boat took 58 passengers. A rough head count came to around 80 so I got back on my bike and was about to head off up the north side of the river when I overheard someone say that the limit was actually 90 passengers. I dismounted again!
Sure enough, there was just enough room for all of us, including about 10 bikes.
It took 15-20 minutes to get across to Starcross then I rode back to Exeter on the Estuary Trail and onwards to my sister's house via the local lumpy lanes.
I noticed that I was going to fall just over 1 km short of a metric century and toyed with doing that to needle
@13 rider but it would have needled me too so I added on one more lane!
100.4 km in 5 h 39 m (excluding the ferry trip), and a light (by Devon standards) 1,110 m of ascent.