Diary - Day 5

The fifth day of our trip would turn out to be a very tough one. I knew it was going to be a high mileage and expected a few tough climbs along the way so before we started I transfered a fair bit of the weight onto my bike. Sam now carried his sleeping bag, two thermarests and our shoes, I carried the panniers full of clothes, the tent and my own sleeping bag. This was basically what I expected the ratio to be from the start, but Sam had wanted to carry more at first. In the interest of finishing before midnight I felt a change was needed and I didn't hear any complaints. This distribution was kept the same until Dornoch 12 days later and it was a more sensible idea, the only drawback being the gradual buckling of my back wheel.

Leaving Cheddar and straight up the first hill of the day we headed towards Wrington where Butcombe brewery awaited. Not the smoothest navigational effort, but the brewery was located and we stepped inside to be met by sales manager Martin Love who proceeded to show us around the brewery, more details of which can be found here - Butcombe Brewery . We left with two t-shirts and eyes wide open as Butcombe dwarfed the other breweries we had seen so far and was a thoroughly professional outfit with a huge capacity.


It was becoming warm, bordering on hot, but the temperature was kept to sensible levels by a north wind. I found myself wondering which I would prefer as we headed into the wind - no wind and a hot, sweaty day or a headwind that kept the temperature down a little. Unfortunately I never reached a conclusion to that poser. We headed towards the M5 for the bridge into Bristol and went through the curiously named Pill, which has some nasty housing estates near the river. It also possessed the stupidest driver on the entire tour; as we came into Pill a man overtook us only to hit the brakes as soon as he was past me in order to turn right into a street. I swerved quickly and was lucky not to hit the vehicle, but rode off wondering if I would have preferred to hit the vehicle in the hope that it may provide an opportunity to kick him in the groin repeatedly a few seconds later. Confrontation is probably best avoided of course, but after careful consideration I think kicking him in the groin would have been just the tonic I needed.

As it happened Bristol was a nightmare. My navigating style is to keep a few maps in a plastic cover and pull them out of my shorts (I wear two pairs) when needed. This is generally perfectly adequate and I have become quite adept at reading a map and cycling, but today I made more mistakes than on the rest of the trip put together. The easiest mistake to make is to follow roadsigns rather than what you interpret the map to say. Some roadsigns are misleading, occasionally they are plain wrong and they are all aimed at motorists anyway. We went the wrong way in Bristol following the wrong branch of cycle route through the industrial area along the edge of the Severn then had more difficulties in Pilning where a signpost pointed to a village one way when it was clearly the other way on the map. What these unscheduled meanderings did provide was a chance meeting with Rob, a friend of Sam and as he pointed out probably the only person he knows of in the whole of Bristol, who passed us in his van near Avonmouth.

Finally we made it to the old Severn bridge and crossed into Wales. I had wanted to go this way as I wanted to see Chepstow again and also wanted to go through the Forest of Dean. The latter was going to be difficult now as we had spent so much time messing about around Bristol. We stopped at the castle and sat down for a belated lunch (this generally involves sandwiches, pasties and flapjacks) before heading off up the B4228. I knew we would not be in Wales again after today and wondered where the border was as we left Chepstow, 5 miles maybe? No, it was 200 yards, the sign for England coming at Tutshill before we had really left Chepstow. Well there is a big castle there so it's not rocket science I suppose.




Another debatable piece of navigating later we had missed Symond's Yat entirely and were heading through Ross-on-Wye onto the A49 and for once I was glad to be on a major road. It was late enough that traffic was minimal and we finally found a stretch of road where we could make decent time after slogging all the way through the day. A little after 8pm we were in Hereford and finally I made some decent navigational decisions. We were heading to the house of Darren and Wendy Richardson, Darren being a friend who I had met in New Zealand 3 years before, and as we came into Hereford I saw the SAS church that they had been married in the previous year. The wedding day was a hazy memory for me, the result of drinking over 10 pints of Guinness throughout it no doubt, but I did remember which road we used to get there and soon enough we arrived at the right place. Pretty chuffed with myself I proceeded to tell Darren how we had defied the odds to make it before nightfall, or some similar nonsense. A plate of spaghetti Bolognese and a cold can of lager later we were pretty much done for the day and Darren left us to sleep in the living room. It was warm enough that I didn't need any more than a sheet all night..

Day 5 review

Mileage = 98
Breweries visited = 1
Pints drunk = 0 (lager doesn't count)