It's a long long road

Today has been my longest ever cycle ride in a single day. All told we've covered 167 miles from Sedbergh to Bewdley and now that we're a little over 2/3 of the way through, my mind is unwisely starting to wander towards the finishing line. Being a poorly educated southerner, it came as a great surprise to me that we would only leave Scotland half way through the third day, but now that I'm in slightly more familiar territory it starts to feel like we're making faster progress. South Lakes to Birmingham seems a lot further than John O'Groats to Inverness not because it is, but because I just about stop counting northness at Edinburgh. Sadly though we're going to progress rapidly into less famliar territory again as we pass through Bristol tomorrow and start to head west.

JPD won't mind my saying that he had a bit of a tough afternoon. The cumulative strain on our legs is starting to slow us both down, so keeping our speed up was hard today with lots of traffic and junctions as we worked our way through Preston, Wigan and Warrington. We have big thanks to offer my family at Bratt & Evans in Northwich for letting us do some serious damage to the coffee shop (that sausage pie should be winning awards!) and to Neil for setting up a roadside feed station to sort us out with much needed goodies to see out the last 30 miles.

The main thing I'm being taught by this trip is patience. It's impossible to rush anything when you're already tired - it's simply not an option to sprint up small hills like I normally would, you have to slow down, give every climb its due and then take back what you can on the other side. The combination of horrible weather for the first four hours, some extra fuel / rest stops in the afternoon and the simple fact that we're slowing down meant that we spent a total of 14 hours travelling today, including over 11 actually riding. Without support, we find it difficult to take short breaks since finding somewhere, locking up, buying food etc all eat up precious minutes. This means our days are about as long as we could make them and still fit in breakfast, dinner and some sleep.

Although we're both suffering increasing levels of fatigue and muscle soreness, we're neither of us carrying any serious niggles so far. The major concern for tomorrow is quite simply whether we have the stamina to complete a reasonably long day of 155 miles. If we can do that then we'll be a lot happier in the evening, contemplating a 'mere' 125 miles to Land's End.

That's all from me. JPD's asleep already so I'd better get off to sleep myself before he starts snoring...