Day Two

Not enough rest. We got in so late the previous night and had to deal with all of our wet and dirty gear, including very dirty bikes, got to bed late and we got a late start after cleaning the bikes in the morning. Still pretty tired from the rough first day.

The B&B was excellent and the breakfast was a good start - the first of many full English's. We chatted with an Aussie chap making his way around the UK to trace his family history (had been at it for about 3 months already), and with a woman (from Germany?) who had come for a painting holiday and used to cycle tour quite a bit. Myra got chatting with the people who ran Lower House as they also run an art studio/school on the premises.

Leaving at about 10am, we were taken straight uphill, put on and took off our rain jackets a few times, and made our way in the direction of Dartmoor National Park.

We passed through a few picturesque towns on our way to Dartmoor and like so many in England, all sitting at the bottom of a ravine. I came to be suspicious of arriving at any town as it brought with it the prospect of more climbing. I can assure you that Devon is just as hilly as Cornwall. So we had a rapid and lengthy decent right down to the boarder of Cornwall/Devon and then climbed steadily for a few miles, had a few minutes of respite, and then Dartmoor stood squarely in our path.

Really nice area, Dartmoor. The park is a giant hill covering 368sq miles, and proved to be a fairly challenging climb to the top. The wind added to it (apparently there are usually strong crosswinds blowing across the top) and it was the first hill that we actually gave up on and had a quick breather and bit of water. No walking the bikes, mind you. We were hungry too, and low on energy, so that's my excuse.

Getting to the top, we stopped at a look-out point (car park) with the ice cream van and a fair few tourists, most of whom are walkers armed with packs and walking poles.
We cracked open the much needed lunch and took in the views, which went on and on for miles. Fairly nice day so far, just a bit windy. Lunch was the usual selection of sandwiches and fruit, nuts, and our daily litre of fruit smoothy (Innocent - yum!), which was a really effective way at keeping our fruit/vitamin intake up without taking up a lot of space. Bit heavy though. Also, something else we found to be really nice was filling one bottle with orange juice - just as much energy as an energy drink but with actual nutritional value. We got our carbs from other sources.

Once on our way again, finished with the 1500ft climb to the top of Dartmoor, we made our way through the rather barren and windblown landscape, but a favorite of Myra's with the heather covered hills. We also had to navigate around all the residents of Dartmoor. There must be fences at some point, but the sheep and even a few herds of horses (are they herds?) wander around wherever they please, and seem to have found that the roads provide a comfortable place to hang out. Sometimes at the side of the road, but often enough, right in the middle of the road itself. We had to ask permission to pass a few times.


Other than the wonderful scenery, the only other thing worth mentioning was my first flat, and only because it was the first of a few. Luckily if happened at a pub next to a hostel and I was able to clean myself up afterwords. The lady behind the bar directed me to the toilets after I had politely asked if it was ok to use them, but when I came back through she grilled me when she saw that I wouldn't be buying anything. Certainly wasn't very amused. We were told that people got nicer the further north you went, and the bar was being set low.

Down the backside of the park, we had a good 15 miles of wonderful decent (not without it's ascents, mind you, and there were still some significant ones). With the day getting on, we went through Exeter, which was just past half way. We weren't making very good time. The landscape started to climb again with about 25 miles to go and our pace slowed back down, so it looked like another late night.

A nice surprise though was an extremely nice forested area between Exeter and Taunton that reminded me quite a bit of Vancouver Island. Really dense, really tall and really lush evergreens, smooth, windy roads with steep drops at the sides. We spied a little B&B that we'd like to go back to in the middle of it all. It's just that it all seemed to be uphill...

It was getting late, it had started to rain, and we had dinner to think about. We weren't far from our destination but they didn't serve dinner, so we had to stop somewhere on our way. We called them and they recommended a nice pub, not far from the B&B, so we stopped in, tired, and glad to be dry. It smelled wonderful, and we chatted to a few other diners as we got ourselves situated, answering the now familiar questions about what we were doing. Only a few miles further north and already people were much friendlier.

Nice village pub, the Lamb and Flag (in Blagdon Hill). Great service, fantastic food, and Neil Young quietly warbling on the speakers. We didn't want to go any further, but alas, we had sleep to tend to and clothes to dry off. Out into the darkness. The sun was properly set and it was past dusk, so it was a bit dicey for the two miles to the B&B. I almost got hit by a speeding Golf GTi, and we got a bit turned around down the final 1000 meters of dirt track (which wasn't easy in the dark on road bikes with not much in the way of illumination) but finally made it to the working farm at Canonsgrove Farm B&B.

Like all of the places we stayed at, our hosts, Lin and Colin, were very nice (Colin had come out looking for us in his car to make sure we found it). We got to bed at 1:00am, feeling a bit frustrated with our progress, with 850 miles to go.