Day 3 – 7th April 2007
We really rated Lyndon House as a B & B. Nothing seemed to be too much trouble for our landlady – I gained the impression that she was perhaps rather new to the hospitality business and was maybe trying just a bit too hard, but we weren’t complaining. The room was comfortable and well-appointed, the shower was very good indeed, the breakfast was generous, consisting of cereal, fruit compôte, yogurt, scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and toast washed down with lashings of tea from bone china mugs that appeared to be hand-painted. Whilst we ate we admired a picture-postcard view across the valley. The only possible drawback here was that Jan does not like smoked salmon. Of course, it would have been rude to say anything or leave it on the side of the plate, so I was obliged to eat it, and there was a lot of it. That left me feeling a little queasy for a good deal of the morning…
The morning was perfect cloudless and unusually warm for early April. There were more hills than I knew existed anywhere. we climbed and we climbed and we climbed and as we climbed … we got off the bike and pushed on more occasions than we cared to mention. On the smallest, steepest, most remote road, a BMW driver followed us up the hill. We were pushing the bike and there wasn’t room for him to overtake. When he did get teh chance, he wound down his window and kindly advcised us that we were meant to ride it. I hope his piles give him 1000 years’ agony.
It wasn’t long before we reached Minions, high up in Bodmin Moor, with Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall, showing its head away to the north-west.
It seemed to take an age to reach Launceston. It was only about 17 miles from St. Neot, but our overall slow speed meant that we were there just before 1pm. We decided that the next pub would be Lunch, and it was, but not before we crossed the Tamar. That momentous event took place at 1.20pm, and we finally arrived at the pub in Bratton Clovelly around 3pm, where we had some sandwiches. We carried on from there to Okehampton, just as the greengrocers and the coffee shop were closing, but we did manage some bananas and carrot cake.
We climbed out of Okehampton and on the rebound reached our highest speed to date, 44.9mph. From there, we carried on to North Tawton with still another 10 miles to go and it would be touch and go as to whether we needed to fit the front light. WE finally arived at the Red Lion in Chulmleigh at about 8.15, 11 hours after we set off, 7h 40 minutes of which were cycling time.