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TdT Phase Two

After two weeks of riding on the wrong (right) side of the road, conversing in tongues unknown and having to make do with glorious weather, a return to England had a lot to live up to. The buffer between Spain and England was a Brittany ferry whose bar staff were primarily French and passengers primarily awful.

Throughout the holiday we had played a game of overtaking bingo (as well as roadkill bingo, and its variation 'roadkill or tree', the details of which shall be revealed at another time) where the nationality of the car overtaking us was guessed before we could see the number plate, most frequently judged by amount of space we were given. The English were easiest to call by dint of the fact that we could usually graze wingmirrors with our elbows. I felt we were being reunited with many of these friends as we consumed our Haribo and Orangina, watching Spain shrink and recede into the evening gloom.

The ferry was headed to Plymouth, and its slow approach gave us ample time to drink the place in, and then spit some of it back out before the taste spoilt things. Not unpleasant itself, but it felt lacking compared to other seaside towns we had ridden through during the previous week. Larger, maybe grander, but also more squalid than the shambolic sprawl of your small Spanish fishing port. The day's mileage was to be manageable, a short hop to Budleigh Salterton would clock us 55 miles or so. Even after two weeks of this lark, we still neglected to consider elevation profiles, and although we knew that we had decided to eschew the no-doubt manageable A38 Exeter Expressway for the wonders of Dartmoor I was not alarmed. A good night's rest in a minibunk in the bowels of a slowly-chugging leviathan prepares one for all.

Plymouth is at sea level. Dartmoor is not. Looking back through the logs of the trip, I was disappointed to see that despite scaling mountains and having countries shift beneath us, Strava reported that our longest uninterrupted climb was the road that lead us from Plymouth up to Princetown* (about half way across Dartmoor). But this disappointment only niggles, silenced by the beauty of the view as we ascended. I have dabbled in Dartmoor before, but never made much progress across it. Nibbling off corners and scaling a few steep slopes for flavour, yes, but the periphery is a different beast to the expanse experienced along the higher roads.

This uninterrupted view of the world below us, all around us, is not without its problems. We had left Plymouth in sunshine, and our direction of travel took us towards, for the most part, scattered patches of blue. We were optimistic at getting to Budleigh without having to wring our socks out. Naivety. Wending our way round this and that our course slowly shifted until instead of facing blue we were facing a grey haze under a blackened sky. The fates, no doubt rubbing their hands with glee, showered us for the first time of many as we ascended our third, maybe fourth, 15% of the day. We were unimpressed.

After a fortnight of riding I thought I'd got the measure of the tandem, but descending in the wet with luggage+stoker was something else. I'm used to having brake performance impaired on a road bike, but being physically unable to stop while attempting to twist your way to the bottom of a steep dip without any casualities I did not like. The more it continued, the more stressful I found it.

A pair of brake blocks, zero casualities and one alcohol-free apple flavoured san miguel later the sun came out and life was good again. Due to a rotated signpost we took a wrong turn down a 20%er in Moretonhampstead and had to climb back up it which was unpleasant, but from there to Exeter we encountered smiling roadies who shouted encouragements as they blitzed by in the opposite direction, a great mental lift, much needed as a lack of food was starting to take its toll.

Bonking on a tandem is a special thing - physically the same as bonking solo, but psychologically a nastier creature. On your own, on your own bike, as your body shuts down around you, you only have yourself to blame. The inner voices snap at you and chastise you. Hungover? Idiot, this is the price you pay. Didn't eat enough, did you? Why not? Come on, force that leg round. Suck it up, push it out, keep on.
On a tandem, loaded, these demons huddle around you and whisper bad things. Why is it suddenly so hard? It's because you're carrying too much. You're still pedalling but you're not going anywhere are you? Blame the stoker. Look. Go on. They could blatantly push harder. It's all weighing you down, holding you back. It could be so easy if it was just you on your own.

Horrible voices, and by Exeter I was losing in my efforts to silence them. We were navigationally confused (after so long in empty places, both on the continent and during the UK leg, I found succesfully negotiating built-up areas incredibly stressful, amplified by the difficulty of u-turning a tandem, sets of traffic lights or randomly stopping and starting while figuring out a direction). The familiarity of the flat Sustrans run that marked the last miles to Budleigh helped bring me back from the edge, but the voices were never far away, and as the inevitable final lumps came I snapped, which I'm still ashamed of. Two miles later we were at Rosie's parents with a cup of tea and it felt like everything had been easy.

Dartmoor in the rain on Vimeo

Next, The Exmouth Exodus: Out, Back and Onwards - 48 hours of hell 'fun'

*despite being fully loaded and generally worn, we managed to rank 10th for this 13 mile uphill segment /stravajunkie