The Diary - Part Five

Day 5 - Thursday 6th July

Many things have kept me awake at night over the years, but last night was the first time I had lost sleep thanks to a sheep. One of John and Ann's hand-reared lambs wanted the world to know that it was hungry right underneath the window of the room Doug and I were in. In my dazed and over-tired state, it took me some time to work out that shutting the double-glazed window would shut out the noise.

Despite that, we all had a fantastic night's sleep and were well-rested when we went downstairs to an awesome full "Welsh" breakfast. It truly was luxury after 4 nights in Youth Hostels.

After getting ready, we went to load up the bikes. To our astonishment, Matt's back wheel was ****ed again! A broken spoke had gone unnoticed over the final few miles and his rear wheel was starting to buckle again. We knew that the route today took us to some remote parts of Herefordshire and Worcestershire, making it unlikely that we'd have any chance encounters with bike-shops. John-superman-Davies came to the rescue and drove Matt and Doug into Abergavenny to get it fixed.

This gave the rest of us a chance to drink tea, write our journals for the first few days of the trip and catch up on the local goings-on in Abergavenny.

By the time Doug and Matt got back from Abergavenny and we packed up again and said our good-byes and thank-yous, it was Midday. Still, we thought, it's only 66 miles to Stourbridge, so we can afford to take it steady. In a fit of irony, I mocked the pair of sign-posts within 100 yards of each other outside Abergavenny that between them thought Skillett was either 12 miles or 9 miles away.

We stopped for some food when we reached Skenfrith Castle on the Welsh-English border , just as the weather returned to the hot and sunny conditions we had been "enjoying" back down in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.

We headed for Ross-on-Wye where, once again, our directions didn't quite match the route we took (I'm still not sure which was actually wrong). Matt circumnavigated a roundabout several times while the rest of us worked out how to get back on track.

As we zipped through hilly Herefordshire and onto undulating Worcestershire, we clocked up some stonking speeds - exceeding 50 mph at one point near Upper Sapey in Herefordshire. However, it soon became apparent that my map-measuring skills even fell short of those of Abergavenny's road-sign makers. It clearly wasn't 66 miles from Abergavenny to Stourbridge. It was more like 86. The gang took the news, er, well, continuing with their deliberate mixing up of local towns (particularly Stourton and Stourbridge).

I began to get even more tetchy when my front mech started playing up which meant I couldn't use the largest chain-ring. I knew we just didn't have the time to carry out the fiddly task of re-adjusting so I just had to put up with it.

We were approaching Kidderminster when the sun started to set. We were all getting tired and disheartened that the miles didn't seem to be sliding by as quickly as they had been on previous days. Every turn of the pedal began to hurt. It was a thankful sight to see Kerry arrive with provisions and, just as importantly, a car to carry the lead-lined bags we'd been dragging for the last 80 miles.

I have pinpointed this as the exact moment that Doug's love-affair with the Rocky bar started.

With renewed vigour (but with legs that didn't seem to quite get that point) we completed the last few miles, arriving at my gaffe in time to watch the last dregs of sunlight disappear beneath the horizon. It was 10pm. Our latest finish yet.

The day ended as it had started with a sumptuous feast. This time lasagne, potato wedges, garlic bread and finally ice-cream rewarded our hard work. As the others trundled off to bed, I washed the cycling kit and hung it to dry before retiring myself at 1am.

Day: 5, Dist: 86.4 miles, Cycling time: 6hr 59min, Ave speed: 12.3mph, Max Speed 50.8mph!!