Day 4 – 8th April 2007
What a difference a day makes! Yesterday was as hard a day’s cycling as one would ever hope to meet; todays was a dawdle by comparison. Our attitude had changed as well. In spite of eating breakfast at 8am, we were not away until 10. A good deal of the late start can be accounted for by our hosts: former Essex residents (Radwinter) whose son did the end-to-end 16 years ago, in 8 days! Dad operated the support vehicle, so 130 miles per day, although extreme, is doable for a fit teenager without luggage who sticks to the A roads nearly all the way.
Apart from the early walk up the steep hill from Chulmleigh, we had a very steady day’s cycling. Navigation was straightforward as the first 19 miles, into Tiverton, were along a B road, almost all easterly so that the outside of my right thigh became sunburnt. We also found the canal towpath with ease, but Sustrans, as ever, came up trumps: the gates were locked and it was impossible to get a fully laden tandem through the labyrinth barrier. After a little exploration and asking passers-by, we found the canal basin and we were away It was not fast cycling, but at least we were free from hills for 10 miles or more. The canal was interesting too: at one point a large fish swirled on the surface, and later we saw a beautiful little perch.
On leaving the tow-path, we kept to Sustrans route 3, and it led us quite a dance. The road signs were all pretty unhelpful but in the village of Greenham, we found a man with a 1:50000 OS map. That sorted us out for a while, but around Langford Budville the doubts set in again. We muddled through somehow but I am not sure even now which roads we took.
On reaching Nynehead we found ourselves climbing a delightful little sandstone gorge and not long afterwards we were in Taunton – to think that we were here a few mornings ago wondering when the train would set off.
I have decided I don’t like Taunton. To an extent that is self-inflicted because I failed to plot the route in sufficient detail and we got lost. I asked a couple of old geezers and they were no help. We were looking for the Taunton and Bridgwater Canal, but ended up finding Junction 25 of the M5, with its extremely unpleasant roundabout intersection with the A38. We had no choice but to take on this maxi-roundabout and were finally relieved to find ourselves on quieter roads and heading into Rushton.
Even on arriving in North Curry, our guest house eluded us for a while, but we were eventually rewarded with an elegant red-brick former doctor’s residence.
Our bike was stowed away, baths were had, washing handed to the landlady and then we were off to the pub. We had the restaurant to ourselves as there was a noisy and inaccurate quiz going on in the other bar. The quizmaster told everyone that the circumference of a circle was equal to pi r squared.
I actually turned the television on in our room and sneaked a look at the weather forecast for the next week. It’s looking pretty good for the foreseeable future, if it isn’t tempting providence too much to say so.
As we walked the 100 yards or so from the Bird in hand to Trevarrick House, we benefitted from the absence of street lighting. The stars were far brighter than we ever see them in SE Essex, although we had to be careful where we put our feet.