So we started at about 8:15 instead. This was not ideal as we had to get to Truro to visit Skinner's brewery in the morning, the weather was nasty and a question mark hung over my back wheel. So we packed up, it hardly mattered that the tent was getting wet this time, and headed to St Austell. Picked up breakfast in a BP garage, not for the first time, and headed down the main road towards Truro. And then we had problems............
Another puncture for me, my back-wheel was starting to give way after hauling around so much weight for so long. I blew it up and hoped for the best but it was flat again after a few hundred yards so the innertube was changed and I cycled into Truro with a now noticeably buckled back-wheel. We found Skinner's brewery and met someone called Amy who gave us a smile, a cheque for the charities and passed us onto to another Skinner's employee (who's name I have clearly forgotten as usual) and we were off on a tour of the brewery with a few other people.
It was an efficient place and Skinners appears to be growing pretty quickly. Their beers are pretty tasty as well so I wont begrudge them some success. Cornwall has more than it's fair share of good breweries so a return visit isn't out of the reckoning. This is Sam pouring a pint at the bar:
It would have been great to sit around trying all of their wares, but we had things to do starting with fixing my bike. Next up would be filling stomachs. We achieved the bike fixing part fairly well having taken directions from another fella from Skinners, a helpful bunch, and were lucky enough to find a competent bike mechanic ready to fix the wheel in minutes. Brilliant, if only they were all like that. We had a quick burger at Burger King, the only time on the trip we used a multinational burger-crap outlet, and dissapeared into the Cornwall countryside trying to find our next stop - Dog House Brewery.
We were well behind time already, I had said around 1 to 1:30 to Steve at Dog House, but we arrived at just before 4pm. Of course we also had Land's End to get to today and my parents were already in Cornwall waiting for us to finish. We met them at the brewery as we chatted to Steve, a bloody nice bloke by the way who we had also met at St Ives on day 1 of the trip, so Steve was our first and last brewer of the trip. Dog House itself is a small brewery run through the passion of the owner and producing some pretty fair beers, as seemed to be the norm on this trip.
We left with bladders a little fuller and found ourselves in something called sunlight. The weather had been gradually improving during the day and now it had reached a stage where we could call it 'nice'. I didn't seem to have the right maps, or any at all, for the next few miles so I was navigating by the sun and what I could see. Cornwall is one of the easier places to do this as the sea can be seen on both sides when you are high up and at Four Lanes we were about 700ft above sea level. The next 15 miles was very enjoyable and took much less than an hour to achieve as we hammered down into Penzance, the wind now still and failing to slow us down for once.
At Penzance we stopped at one last supermarket for once more meal of sandwiches and assorted crap, we were overdue a meal by now and were not in a hurry to do the last stretch on empty stomachs. One thing that had certainly improved was our ability to go distances without much food intake - not a good idea at any point, but sometimes it happens. Early on we had to eat regularly or would get fatigued quite quickly, but now it was possible to go 40 or 50 miles without consuming anything more than a flapjack.
The last 10 miles was simple enough. As soon as a few little hills were encountered I went clear of Sam, enjoying the solitude and the cool evening breeze as the sun still shone down on us. I stopped and allowed him to catch up about a mile from the end and rang my mum to tell her we were nearly there. As we flew down the last stretch and entered Land's End we expected someone to be out taking photos of us, but they were all still sitting in the van chatting!
We took a few lacklustre photos of us at the Land's End sign, but really we wanted to get home as it was about to get dark. Change of clothes, bikes in vehicles and we were ready to go. Sam went with his dad back to Somerset and my parents took me back to Oxfordshire, all done for this year after 37 days, 2766 miles, numerous breweries, pubs, campsites, hostels, interesting people, interesting places, great scenery and loads and loads of bloody wind and rain. I was looking forward to sitting indoors for a few days.
Day 37 review
Mileage - 75ish
Weather rating - 7/10 - nonsense to start with, beautiful summer evening to finish
Breweries - 2
Punctures - 1
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