Day 4

We started day 4 early as usual, so we couldn't make use of the breakfast at the B&B. Instead, they wrapped up some delicious sandwiches and we ate half before we left, and the rest along the way, before lunch.

Charles was suffering from huge blisters from silver D of E and seemed to be more exhausted than the rest of us, and unfortunately missed the next 7 days of cycling. The rest of us were still coping well. Charles fortunately rejoined us later, so he cycled the majority of the trip. Cycling 675 miles over 9 days is still an amazing achievement in itself.

As a warm up we cycled up Cheddar gorge. The weather was good so views were great, and there was hardly any traffic (a few other cyclists coming the other way). The gorge started very steep but eased off, although it did seem to last forever. Later we were told we were mad to have gone that way, we just looked smug and said it wasn't that bad.

From LEJOG Day 4

After the gorge we had some good downhill, and stuck to really nice country roads that weren't too much of a pain to navigate. The sign posting in this region of Britain was really helpful, as it was thorough and meant we just had to know the weird name of the next little village.

We were all looking forward to the Severn bridge as a landmark in the trip. However, as we approached Bristol we got one of our top views from the Clifton suspension bridge. The area of Bristol we cycled through was really nice, and CTC helped navigate through to some oddly placed villages, so we could join the cycle path to the Severn bridge.

Crossing the bridge was really hard work as the side winds were extreme. Also, on arrival into Wales, it began to rain. We now took "the high road" following the Welsh border, which involved a lot of hills.

To finish off, the youth hostel was across an old, shaky bridge (which had steps either side), and spent half an hour wondering where in the woods the hostel was. After phoning them, we used their directions and arrived at a reasonable time. In the evening we ate a large amount of pasta and watched Top Gear.

Our total distance was 63.4 miles. Our route can be found here. The second half isn't entirely accurate, as we changed our mind to take a different option on the CTC pack we were following.