(written by Dave)

It’s late and it was a hard day so this will be brief.  I’ll post a few extra pictures because it was such a scenic day.  We had a fantastic ride over the moors of the Dartmoor Forest.  There were some really tough climbs, twice breaking 15% but we were rewarded with great views over the top of the hills.  For the day we climbed over 1,200 meters, which is a lot on single racing bikes, let alone loaded touring bikes.  The moors are covered with green due to all of the rain – so there was some good from all that rain.  The moors are open range area so there are quite a few animals, ponies, highland cows, regular cows, sheep and horses – sometimes all in the same field, as there are no fences.  The sheep liked to sleep on the road not really caring about us or the cars.

Today we also tried our first “Cream Tea”.  This is basically clotted cream, scones and jam, but called Cream Tea in Devon and Cornwall.  Wow, talk about artery clogging.  Good thing we rode as many hills as we did.  We didn’t eat lunch after our tea, we didn’t need it!

Once off the moors and heading towards Plymouth, we had some pretty busy roads but well fuelled by the cream tea, we made good time to the Torpoint ferry where we crossed from Devon to Cornwall.  After the ferry we had another 25k to reach Looe.  The ride to Looe was very hilly as well and it took just about every ounce of energy to make it.  We had little struggle finding a campsite but eventually settled into another sleeping pod at a site just outside Looe (they call the pods glamping here).  There are many sites in the area but most don’t take us lowlife tenters.  Poor planning meant that we had pannier surprise noodles for dinner.  Not the tastiest meal of the trip but it had the calories we needed after a hard day without lunch.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well.  It was hard but we are feeling good about the progress and now know that Lands End is only two day away.  We are planning a week off the bikes somewhere near Lands End.  Nancy is busy now trying to figure out where.  We should have planned ahead better on that one but we just didn’t know when we would arrive with all the weather we’ve had.  Oh yeah, it was grey today, not much sun and we had headwinds, but it was dry, so we are not complaining.

Tomorrow we are still unsure of where we will end up, other than to say that it will be about half of the remaining 80 miles to Lands End.  Now it’s time for sleep.

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