Wednesday Jun 18, 2014

We left our warm showers host at about 8:00 a.m., it was a little overcast to start with but the sun came out mid-afternoon and it was quite hot, for English standards.  We followed the printed route that Kirsty and Markus gave us, it was really helpful.  It was a nice route but we still couldn’t see over the hedges to see any of the scenery.  We decided to join the A38, it was supposed to be a busy route but we could see more scenery because the hedges were cut back.

The A38 also had a cycle lane for the most part.  Cycled into another County.

We got into the City of Gloucester by lunch time.  It is a lovely City and has done an amazing renovation to its dock/quay area.  It used to be a dirty dockland area now it is modern open space with shops and cafes.

We stopped to get something to eat and a couple came to chat to us.  They were from New Zealand, we had a great chat about our trip to NZ and their visit to England.  We both agreed that customer service was severely lacking in the UK.

We needed to get more calls on Ralf’s phone.  When we called to book the trains and the car hire, we had to pay 15p a minute and we basically used up all Ralf’s minutes!!  We got it sorted out and wandered down towards the cathedral.

The cathedral is absolutely magnificent.  Because of the bikes we went in separately.  I had a very quick wander around and then asked Ralf to try and not be too long because we still had about 20 kms to cycle to our campsite. It was really difficult for him to keep it short as the inside of the cathedral was incredible.

The cathedral has a team of stone masons working on the upkeep of the cathedral all the time.  We will have to come back into the UK this way so that we can both go in together and spend some time.

We continued to our camp site which was next to the Severn River and a pub.  The fella who ran the place asked Ralf where we had come from and where we were going and when Ralf said we were doing LeJog, he said that he really admired what we were doing and we could have the camp site for free.  He assumed we were doing the ride to raise money for a charity.  Ralf told him we weren’t and asked if he had a charity box  he would put some money into, he responded no you can put it in yours.

We ate at the pub for dinner.  Lovely chicken and leek pie for me and lasagna for Ralf washed down with a lovely local cider and Murphy’s for Ralf.  Dessert was English strawberries and cream mmmmm good.