Day 9 - To Hell and Back!!!

Thank God today is over!! Last night and this morning I really wasn't convinced my body was gonna make today. I had been battling bad knee problems all day yesterday and felt so shattered after yesterdays ride I couldn't even finish yesterdays lunch or dinner. Bearing in mind we're burning around 5500 calories a day, not eating much food is not a good thing!! So I woke up this morning feeling pretty down in the dumps about everything. We had close to 98 miles to cover, our biggest day yet. I felt physically and mentally exhausted. My knee ached and it was tipping it down with rain, and was forecast to rain all day. I smothered my knee in deep heat, sank a couple of ibuprofen tablets, and donned my wet weather gear. This consisted of overshoes, waterproof jacket and marigold gloves!! The rain was a real concern to me, not because I didn't want to get wet but because getting cold makes you much more susceptible to injury, and all I had covering my already knackered knee was some lycra! Pete adjusted my saddle before we left, raising the height of it. Being a repetitive injury our tactic was to keep adjusting the saddle throughout the day to vary the movement in the knee. This seemed to work as miraculously for the first 60 miles I had next to no pain at all! We set off at 6.52am and got quickly onto the A38 which was to be our route for much of the day. It was raining a fair amount when we left. I was so wrapped up in layers though that I was soon pretty cooking and my sunglasses (with light yellow lenses) kept steaming up!! I don't really remember much of the first few miles. I went into a sort of trance, cycling behind Pete's back wheel. My legs were pedalling but my brain was elsewhere, so knackered that I felt kind of detached about what was going on around me. Hitting Bristol made me wake up a bit. It was rush hour and it was so busy I felt like I was on my morning London commute. It was the first time out of our entire ride that we had other cyclists over taking us! We'd been overtaking tonnes of others over the last few days but had never had anyone else pass us!! This really seemed to nark Pete off (I was too gone to care anymore!!) especially since some of them looked pretty unfit and were riding really crap bikes!! He started racing them between traffic lights which was quite amusing!! It took us a while to navigate through Bristol and get out the other side, meaning our first pit stop wasn't until 27 miles into the ride, at 1hr 50 mins. Carrying on we followed the A38 once more following signs to Bridgwater and Taunton. My energy levels felt really low even after the first break and I had to have an energy gel after a particularly long and arduous climb. The rain got really really hard at points, hurting your face as it hit. I gave up wearing sunglasses. I couldn't see anything, either from all the spray or from them steaming up! At one point I got a bit close to Pete's rear wheel in a torrential downpour and got a full facefull of water kicking up from his tyre!! The rain made the pot holes harder to see and waking me from my trance I suddenly heard Pete shout 'HOLE, HOLE!!!' He had ploughed straight over a huge crater in the road and, having no time to react, I then flew into it too! Amazingly my bike was ok. I half expected to see the front wheel damaged from the impact but all seemed fine. My poor wrists had taken a right battering once again though and felt really jarred. Back in the saddle we ploughed on slowly clocking up the miles. We stopped again at about 45 miles, about 5 or 6 minutes past our 3 hour mark, having tried in vain to find somewhere dry to shelter for a bit. I got even more depressed realising we weren't even half way, and I already felt I had nothing left in me. The next few miles were just a daze to me, trying to keep my legs pedalling and to keep up a good pace. I didn't want to end up going really slowly as with 98 miles to cover, even at a good 15mph average that would mean almost 7 hours in the saddle plus another hour for breaks. Go much slower and the ride would drag horrendously and our energy levels would suffer more and more with each hour. We managed to maintain a 14.6/14.7 average for much of it which was amazing considering everything that was thrown at us. Hiting 60 miles my knee woke up and started complaining. This was what I'd been dreading for the last 36 hours! We pulled over, Pete got his bike tool out and raised my saddle further. It felt better after this and we continued on. It was a pretty silent ride, neither of us saying much. Pete tried to make conversation a few times but I felt so dead I could only manage a word or grunt in reply!! We still hadn't seen our support vehicle pass us. We'd been expecting them since entering Somerset after receiving a message saying they had turned off the M5 and were coming up behind us on the A38. We passed turnings for Glastonbury, giving a brief cheer as we'll both be attending the festival in a couple of weeks! Eventually we hit Bridgwater which was a really nice little town with it's own castle. We were having to stop more regularly now to adjust my saddle more. The frequent torrential downpours meant I was getting quite cold and my knee was starting to seize up more. We passed through Taunton getting a bit lost as the gps, true to form, kept sending us down little one way streets the wrong way!! In our effort to get out of Taunton we hit a series of steep hills before getting back on the A38. We weren't on it for long before we took a minor road leading us up towards Whitnage.  The road was actually more like a rough farm track and was horrendously pot holed and bumpy with big clumps of mud everywhere and big stones. To top it off it soon got incredibly steep, winding up and up at a gradient worse than that of Kirkstone Pass. We were 16 miles from the campsite and I was running on empty. Our support vehicle had missed us and were already at the camspite, and there were no shops or petrol stations in sight for us to get more chocolate bars. I could see another repeat of Day 4 unravelling before me, with terrible roads, painfully slow progress and gradually getting so depleted of energy that we'd wouldn't be able to continue without our support coming out with food for us. I got quite upset. We'd slowed to about 6-8 mph meaning 16 miles would take over 2 hours. Pete said that his satnav said the hill was nearly over and that there a small village about 2 miles up ahead where we could get food. We struggled on and slowly the roads got better and we hit the small village of Whitnage...with not a shop to be seen. We did however pass a pub so Pete went in and to my relief came out with 2 mars bars. Good job he did too because the last 14 miles only got harder. We made good progress up to the last 8 miles where we hit a succession of incredibly steep climbs that seemed to go on forever. I don't know how my body found the energy to get up them but it did, climbing each one steadily without stopping. The second time this ride a Mars Bar has saved my bacon! My knee was holding up too! After the last knackering assault we hit a level run leading us to a farm, where the satnav promptly stopped navigating and sung us a jubilant song informing us we had arrived at our destination. Unfortunately it was just a random farm with no mention or sight of any camping. Feeling a bit past it and defeated we rang Pete's parents who gave us a postcode. I typed this into my iPhone and it told us we were standing right on that postcode!! Pants! Glancing down the road on the map I spotted West Middlewick Farm, the name of the camspite! We turned left out the farm we were at and cycled a few hundred yards down the road to see Steve, Pete's Dad waiting for us! We made our way to the campervan utterly drenched through, exhausted and for myself a little shocked that I'd actually made it. We'd covered 97.56 miles at a 14mph average. It was 3.20pm when we arrived making it an 8.5 hour day including breaks (cycling time 6hrs 58mins). 

We gobbled down some chicken rolls, biscuits and tea and headed for the showers to warm up whilst Pete's Mum threw all our sopping wet gear in the tumble dryers! 

I've been reading Mark Beaumonts account of how he cycled round the world in 195 days and after today I've come to conclusion he has to be insane! In his travles he had to tackle all the problems we've had (extreme fatigue, horrendous roads, very long consecutive days, knee trouble, bad weather) except on a much larger scale. He had all the world climates to contend with, carried 30kg of stuff on his bike, had to cope with illness along the way and had numerous technical bike problems and breakages to overcome. Plus he did it alone and covered 18000 miles over 195 days! I've got to the point where Day 11 (or Lands End Day) can't come soon enough! The thought of having to do another 186 days of this would have me running for the hills! I couldn't have done today without Pete either who somehow managed to stay remarkably cheery throughout and chivvied me on along each gruelling mile. Cycling around the world alone must be an unimaginably hard thing to do. Hats off to the Mark Beaumont! I think he's incredible!

Tomorrow is only 72 miles long, taking us down near Newquay, North Cornwall. The weather is looking to be somewhat wet again although not quite a heavy as today. Psychologically I feel much better having conquered today. It's only 2 days to go, and the last day is only 45 or so miles!! :o) The end is in sight!