Thursday 11 September: day five – St Briavels to Clun

63 miles. 5:59 hours of cycling. Average speed 10.5mph.

St Briavels breakfast happens in the wonderful castle dining room - see Pete below trying to look suitably baronial.

The run down into Monmouth was lovely, but the ten mile gradual ascent into Hereford was dispiriting. I felt tired and every pedal turn was an effort. We stopped for lunch in a cafe in the centre of Hereford and I gave myself a bit of a talking to. The beautiful rolling countryside which followed helped to lift my spirits.  

You notice much more on a bike – in particular road kill. In a car you see the big stuff in the middle of the road, on a bike you see everything – badgers, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, rats, mice, voles,  pheasants, pigeons - every few hundred yards and all smelling bad. 

I feel like I might be getting on top of the toe cramp. I was trying to drink two bidons every ten miles. I bought an extra one from Mastercarft Cycles in Hereford to help carry more liquid. The shop was family run and sold its own brand of touring bike – the Craftsman, built out of Reynolds tubing. Absolutely lovely and, in many ways, similar to my Club Tour.

Today was the best day's cycling yet with very little cramp. 

I loved the sign post outside St Weonards Post Office – John o’Groats 629, Lands End 234. The Post Mistress told me that she has four or five groups of end-to-enders in the shop every day. She was very proud that a picture of her sign had appeared on an end-to-end web site.  

Some miles after St Weonards I lay down on a grass verge in the sunshine on the edge of the A4110 and waited for Pete, who was about 20 minutes behind me. Our arrangement was that I would go ahead but wait for him at any significant change of route.  

We set off at about 5.30 to cover the last 10 miles to Clun. 

The navigation through the Shropshire hills proved really difficult. The roads were so small and the junctions so indistinct that it was really hard to know exactly where you were even with my large scale trucker maps. I got to what I thought was the right junction and waited for Pete for about 30 minutes. When he didn’t arrive I guessed that he had taken an earlier turn which I had been tempted to try.  

I pressed on up some very steep and narrow lanes and got complete lost twice and had to back-track. I arrive at Clun YHA at 7.00 thinking Pete might be ahead of me but he was not here. After nearly an hour of waiting and dark falling I started to get worried. The YHA was run by Barbara, a volunteer warden, and she suggested to one of the other guests that we drive out to try to find Pete.  

Just as we were about to leave on a search mission Pete eventually turned up, very fed up but otherwise OK. It was 8.00pm and we were too late for food at the pub so the lovely Barbara made us cheese sandwiches from her own food. 

Barbara is an 81 year-old cyclist who lives in Wales and had cycled the ten miles from the station to the YHA to start her stint as warden. She was due to travel home the next day. She and her husband cycled together all their lives, including when they had a son who they put on the back of a tandem. They had been together for nearly 60 years when he died this January. Barbara had only just got back on to her bike after his death.