Day 3: Tinhay to Bickleigh. The day started
brutally with a couple of nasty climbs right out of the door. It
took me almost 16 minutes to complete the first mile
and almost an hour for the first five miles. After that it got
easier--except when it wasn't.
We passed Lydford Gorge without visiting the waterfalls because I
didn't want to do any unnecessary walking after all the morning's
hills,
but we did visit the Castle ruins. Well, Mr. Balint did. I didn't
feel like walking all the way up that little knoll.
We had to do this at some point. So that's done.
On the other end of Lydford we joined the Granite Trail. It is
almost all paved and wider than many of the road's we've been
riding.
The trail is up on the side of a ridge. And there are some nice
views.
Obviously this is a rail trail. If it was a normal road they would
have run it down and back up out of the gorge, and not spent money
on luxuries like viaducts.
The bear keeps getting in to my dam photos.
We ate lunch and waited out a rain shower in that rail car back
there. I was too lazy to go back and get a proper picture of it
because of the
rain and cold. It rained several times during the day, and got
progressively sunnier as the day went on.
We left the trail at Okehampton and back to the up and down roads.
For a while things were nice.
This road wins the award for highest hedges so far.
This climb was so ridiculous I had to walk. It was a 16-18% grade.
Mr. Balint suffered a gear problem, but ultimately powered up the
climb--probably damaging some little-used internal organs. Spleen
maybe.
Most of the afternoon involved climbs up onto ridges like this.
Then there was a big descent to the castle.
Bickleigh Castle. You can barely tell that the plastic sheeting is
supposed to look like the castle. Our room is in one of the
buildings in the
courtyard. It's full of bride's magazines for some reason. We
cycled down to the local pub for dinner, and ate and drank too
much.
Tomorrow should be much less hilly. We're riding to Glastonbury.