Day 2

Day 2

Golant near Fowey to Steps Bridge near Exeter.

A good day with less rain more climbing and a thankful good bye to Cornwall.
The cycling started at 8:30 with some of the steepest hills we've come across. A wrong turn down to the fishing village of Polpero sapped both our strength and our moral. After a few arguments we decided to trust the GPS and maps rather than our misplaced sense of direction.
We arrived in Looe at 11 o'clock having made painfully slow progress. At Looe I had the genius idea of buying an enormous Cornish pastie that I just about managed to squeeze into my ruck sack. I returned to chomp on the pastie throughout the day's ride and can recommend Cornwalls finest foodstuff to any aspiring Tour de France cyclists.
The road out of Looe to the ferry at Torpoint was busy with holiday traffic and the quick ferry ride to Plymouth across the River Tamar a welcome rest.
Plymouth was horrendous. It was a home match for Plymouth Argyle against QPR and negotiating the poor mix of dual carridge way, A -roads and poor cycle lanes was hazardous. After Plymouth we climbed up to the highest point on the whole of our route,500m at Dartmoor.
Once the clouds lifted, Dartmoor was fantastic cycling country full of wild ponies, cattle and sheep on unfenced roads which had the effect of slowing the holiday traffic. We stopped at Prince Town near Dartmoor Prison, filled our water bottles and prepared for the last 20miles.
This part of the ride had some fantastic long open decsents which at one point I reached an eye watering 44mph. The final climb of the day was one of the toughest from Morton Hampsted and I had to have a Snickers bar at the top as the seemingly never ending pastie was gone and I was becoming dizzie and light headed. A condidtion cyclists strangely refer to as the "bonk".
After the the life enhancing powers of snickers I wizzed down a 4 mile decent through woods with no traffic which was as good as any ski run.
We arrived at the Blytheswood Hostel near Exeter and were given a fantastic welcome by Patrick who had even driven to the local Co-op to get us supplies. Looking forward to tommorow away from hills of Devon and Cornwall and onwards to Somerset.
Finally... what a start for Stoke, Goaarn you Mighty Potters and welcome back to the Medfords I'll try and call you tomorrow. I've listed our statistics below. We have climbed the equivalent of Snowdon from sea level three times in the last two days. I'm pretty tired and ready for bed.

Statistics
Friday
71 miles cycled in 7.5hrs
5250 feet climbed
Saturday
5698 feet climbed
67 miles in 8hours

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