Day 3 - Dolton to Winscombe

Wednesday 4th August


Distance - 79.38 miles (overall 201.79 miles)
Max Speed - 37.1mph
Time on bike - 5h 46m 37s
Average - 13.7 mph

Riders Of The Storm

Had a really bad nights sleep, woke up at 02:15 am and never got back to sleep till 04:00 am. Just when I managed to drift off for what felt like 5 minutes I was woken by the sound of rain, super massive heavy rain. It stopped at first light where we took our chance to get up and stuck into our morning routine, it stayed off for probably 10 minutes before it started again. This is where our tiny one man tents let us down, they weigh only 1.4kg, a massive bonus point, they were super waterproof, another massive bonus point but they were tiny, this only gets a medioka point. The small size was good when erecting and disassembling but the sting in the tail was there was no room for storing or sorting out kit as they were so small. You were either inside lying down or completely outside, no room for anything in between. This meant to get inside in the rain you had to kind of half get in your sleeping bag lying down to get your wet shoes and kit off, still with the door open exposed to the elements. The only time the door was closed was when you were ready to sleep.

Needless to say it was struggle this morning, trying to cook breakfast and pack away our kit under a tree for shelter. Although we managed to roll our tents up in the toilet block, surrounded by just woken up old dudes doing there business still, its better than being outside. One of the biggest mistakes that day was when a sweet old lady came over through the rain from her caravan to meet us under the tree, anorak on, and asked "would you like a cup of tea?", I thanked her and respectfully declined, purely an automated response with no thought in it at all. With that she went back to her caravan, then I suddenly thought to myself"why the f#*k did I say no?sh#t sh#t sh#t!". Logan, still trying to brew up tea from the water used to boil our eggs and desperately trying to protect the flame on the gas stove from the elements, was in to much shock at my response to say yes himself. She left us standing in the pouring rain, freezing, and wet. If I was to choose one thing that morning to try and keep spirits up i would of said "a nice cup of tea from a nice old lady". I still don't know why i said no.

Myself trying to get the willpower to get going

Logan doing the same

We were on the road at 10:30 am, the rain now reduced to a drizzle which was promising until a mile down the road it came on again worse than before. Cycling through this type of rain presented a few problems we never thought about before, we waterproofed all our kit thinking the rain would fall from above or even the sides but as we discovered cycling through the constantly soaked roads most of the water in fact came from below, also you cant wear glasses as they don't have wiper blades, imagine driving your car through torrential rain without any wipers. Taking them off wasn't any better as you could barely keep your eyes open. 

Today felt it really was a tester but our morale was still high as we no longer had the worry of keeping kit dry, because it was soaking now anyway. Felt like we were ticking the miles off steady till I heard Logan shouting he had a puncture. He jumped off his bike while I cycled on to find a dry/safe place to change the inner tube. Luckily about 400 meters up the road, in the middle of nowhere was a big log cabin style building where I found shelter just of to the side of the entrance. From what I could see from the outside it was a super upper class cooker shop, selling Aga's and huge Range cookers, my first thought was my wife would love this. We quickly fitted a new tyre and new tube to Logans front wheel.

New tyre & new tube fitted outside the cooker shop near Hollocombe

Back on the road again the rain stopped this time enough to remove our waterproof jackets, and the roads were nice and the hills on our side. It was good going along B roads until Tiverton, although the pace is slower on theses roads it was good to relax and not cycle religiously on the left hand side. We stopped off at The Coffee Bean, Tiverton,  for lunch where we saw an awesome bike, I would of described as the push bike Mad Max would have owned. 

The awesometastic bike outside the coffee shop in Tiverton

Somewhere near Tiverton we crossed this county sign, smiles all round since the rain stopped.

From Tiverton we cycled non stop to Taunton, where Logan nearly got ran down twice. The hills started to become a lot more mellow on the way, the rain came on again for a brief period but although heavy, it was short. After Taunton, the roads seemed flat, this felt amazing as we were putting the same effort on these flat roads that we were on the hilly roads in Devon but were achieving a steady 20mph without effort. After stopping for some hard boiled eggs we both couldn't get over the change in weather, pace and road conditions, all for the better. 

We just passed the county line for North Somerset just before stopping at a campsite beside Brewers Fayre - Sidcot Arms, Winscombe, near Weston-super-Mare. After last nights and today's rain, we camped up under some trees for shelter, convinced the managers to store our panniers in their house, had a quick shower in the bleakest, darkest and dingiest shower which strongly smelt of a number two! Still this was better than no shower. Managed to get some relaxation time in the pub nearly, I rarely 'fancy' a pint but I did that night, and it was good, and I rarely eat crisps either but managed 4 or 5 bags. I think my body is telling me I need more food, as we were burning nearly 8000 calories per day, that's 4 times as much food, imagine sitting down to have 12 square meals a day! Its a hard one to get your head round.

This was taken just before we stopped for camp, 3 county's in 1 day.

Another good day, from being wet all morning my feet looked like prunes and were sore to touch and to walk on. Both our legs were starting to feel sore and were struggling to get around off the bike, we were fine on the bike though. Apart from all the strains the weather and roads threw at us we both felt positive and were still stoked at the simplest things like a funny road sign, Mad Max's bike, hard boiled eggs or cycling enough miles to get to the next page on our map. Looking forward to tomorrow as we will be in Wales.