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@6pt
This might be a long one...
This weekend, like hats above and many others, I rode the Exmouth Exodus. Unlike many, and as I did last year, I rode on after Exmouth to Poole (on the A35, as above), and then from Poole on to London.
Unlike previous years, however, I also rode to the start of the Exmouth Exodus (Bristol) on Saturday afternoon, from Budleigh Salterton. It was also different from previous years in that this riding was being done on a loaded tandem with the forum's own tricitybendix providing the push.
To make things harder, on Thursday we had ridden to Budleigh Salterton through Dartmoor from Plymouth, which is not particularly flat at the best of times, and felt decidedly less so carrying 40kgs+ of camping equipment and clothes.
How did we end up in Plymouth? Well, with a bit of backtracking and plotting, it looks a little bit like this.
Day One
Nunhead -> Newhaven -> Dieppe -> Jumièges
We pointed our laden wheels southwards 5am on the 18th of July (tb's birthday. I couldn't help but feel there were better ways to celebrate such things but this is how we found ourselves). We inched our way towards Newhaven in the morning gloom, fighting off the cold and hoping the weather would hold out. By Layhams Lane we had got to grips with the handling of the bike under load, and by Titsey we'd had an unplanned waterbottle jettison and a thrown chain. Both issues resolved we merrily rolled with surprising speed towards the coast, being caught out by (and shamefully walking up) one steep hill and passing through a few light showers. By the ferry terminal I had managed to rack up a surprising slug deathtoll and the wind was howling. "It's always like this down here" said the passport man, "even if it's still and shining everywhere else."
He was smiling.
As we waited for boarding in a bleak holding pen we spied another tandem heading the same way - this one a recumbent with trailer piloted by a Canadian couple. They were pedalling to Turkey. 50 miles under our belt and we'd already been trumped.
On the ferry, attempts to watch the day's stage of le Tour were scuppered by snoozing, and attempts to snooze were scuppered by incredibly uncomfortable chairs, but exhaustion overcame all and one long blink later we were in foreign lands and on the wrong side of the road, but the strong coastal winds blew just the same.
From Dieppe we followed the River Scie south to Auffay on a road that gently climbed as it snaked from one bank to the other through the odd small town, stopping for lunch in a quiet churchyard in Saint Victor l'Abbaye then changing course to shadow the Cailly River through Malaunay down to the Seine where we spent our first night in a rather featureless campsite in Jumièges - a town with an impressive Abbey that loomed over us as we made our dusk approach.