Friday June 13, 2014

We didn\’t have warm croissants this morning as we wanted an early start.

A short day today as all we really wanted to do was get back on the route to Okehampton.  We are now taking a different approach to our routing.  We are going the more direct route and not following the book I bought.  The book tends to go the back routes, which is not a bad thing, but we are not following the most direct route on the back routes.

However, today we started of following his directions out of Tavistock – through Peter Tavy and Mary Tavy.  This route was also the National Cycle Network Route 27 – this is a poor excuse for a cycle route.  We started of okay, on the back country lane from the caravan park, then we headed down a single track road to Peter Tavy, then it went pear shaped.  The route took us down a rough track and then an even narrower track onto a bridle-way.

At one point we could hear the river flowing beside us and I was absolutely dreading getting to the river and finding out that we had to ford it – but fortunately there was a bridge.

We eventually got on to A3047 towards Okehampton.  The drivers here are reckless.  They do not give us much room and if they do they will overtake at the craziest places, on blind curves, going uphill – awful.  We eventually decided to go down to Lydford to see what the Granite Trail was like.  If it was rough we would come back and rejoin the A3047 into Okehampton.

It was wonderful, 18 kms of paved off-road cycling.  We even met other cyclists that smiled and waved.  What a joy.

We crossed over the Meldon Viaduct, which was built in 1874 and spans 165 metres.

We arrived at the YHA at 1:00 pm and after setting up the tent, having a free sandwich and a shower we headed downtown to Okehampton.  A ten minute walk down the hill and a 20 minute walk back up!  Okehampton is nothing to write home about, it is a small Town with some nice shops and a lovely stone church in the centre of Town.

The YHA is in a restored rail station.  We were camping, but were allowed to use all the facilities inside – the showers, kitchen etc.

The weather today was very hot (for England).  There will be a lot of sunburnt bodies tomorrow.  The English don’t always remember to put on suncream.