A rest day at home today (pic), doing routine chores in town – pictures to the chemist’s, replace my back tyre, buy a house etc. The back tyre had been deteriorating steadily since Taunton: a little thup-thup-thup, one per revolution, detectable as tiny jolts to the saddle. The rubber’s gentle way of telling you it’s…
Author: Rob Ainsley
Britain 5: Taunton to Bath
I may only have been a quarter of the way to John o’Groats, but I was going to be at home tonight. A full sunny day of riding got me back to Bath, where I live. So instead of a strange, uncomfortable bed in a damp and dingy hostel, I could look forward to my…
Britain 4: Barnstaple to Taunton
I’ve clearly upset the weather gods in some past life. This is turning into a very wet trip. I fixed my puncture from yesterday evening in the B&B porch and set back out into the heavy rain. There followed a lot of long, wet slogging up and down tedious hills (pic). I was continuing to…
Britain 3: Camelford to Barnstaple
At last, a day without rain, and with a euphoric tailwind. The local element to the B&B breakfast was home-made redcurrant jelly, and jam – a delicious rhubarb, ginger and pineapple, though I wasn’t sure all those ingredients had necessarily come from the garden. Camelford had been in the news for a chemical spill in…
Britain 2: Perranporth to Camelford
There was little point towelling myself off after my morning shower. Thanks to the hostel’s lack of a drying room and indeed heating, I immediately got wet through again putting on my sodden clothes from yesterday. My locally-sourced breakfast was very satisfying though. Grilled mushrooms, dark and woodsily pungent. Lovely sweet strawberries, small and juicy,…
Britain 1: (Penzance to) Land’s End to Perranporth
The sun blocker I bought for the trip is working wonders. I put it on this morning at Penzance hostel as I set off. Immediately it clouded over, and rained heavily all day. I swished through ten miles of puddles to get to Land’s End for the ceremonial start of my trip. The visitor centre…
Britain 0: Bath to Penzance
We are now entering Cornwall, the guard announced as we crossed the Tamar at Plymouth, in the same tone that a mural might state You are now entering Free Derry. It looked very hilly through the window of the 1557 from Bath, not always in the way I expected. We passed St Austell’s bizarre clay-trail…
C2C 4: Consett to Sunderland
Negotiating the stodgy pub breakfast was our first challenge. Negotiating the cycle maze was the second. There are al fresco artworks all along the C2C; most of these are inventive sculptures, figures of cows made out of scrap metal to suggest the industrial heritage of the area for instance. But outside Consett was an earthwork…
C2C 3: Alston to Consett
The hardest day, up to the highest point on the C2C (606m), but some spectacular roof-of-the-Pennines scenery, and lanes threading their way round stark hills where the traffic jams consisted of sheep. There was plenty of climbing up to Nenthead – a town, not a term of abuse. On the border by the weatherbeaten sign…
C2C 2: Keswick to Alston
Damp, cool, level riding along another railway path out of Keswick, criss-crossing the River Greta in wooded valleys. There was some cumbersome wiggling on side roads to avoid the main road into Penrith; we lunched on baked spuds in a caff in the market. I was struggling up the long hill to Hartside, and its…