Hosepipe Ban ??!!!!!!!

Now this is something I can't quite work out, there's a hosepipe ban in Englandshire yet me and Andy cycled 92 miles today over about 8 hours and it didn't stop raining once. All that water must be capable of being stored somewhere. Even we both managed to store a few pints in the bottom of our panniers !!!!

We rattled off the 40 odd miles up to Aust services on the Severn bridge in quick time and were greeted by a large group of family and friends waving as we cycled in. It was great to see them all and really appreciated, raising our spirits on such a damp rainy day. I could sense a little emotional tear in the eyes of a number of the people there, as we set off again, bellies full from all the food and cakes given to us.

Up to Monmouth we headed, past Tintern, and is was then that the spokes pinged again. Two have gone, and we limped gingerly on, up to Hereford where I can hopefully find a cycle shop that can rebuild the wheel in the morning.

We decided, mainly due to the continuing awful weather, but also as a treat for cycling so far, to stay in a travel lodge. So we are in the room, which is looking like a Chinese laundry with all our kit hanging up, both our bikes in the room with us, and having full bellies for the second time today having devoured an Indian takeaway!!!!

My knees are aching, helped by neurofen. Andys saddle sores are, well, sore, helped by sudocream. The bikes are groaning after all that rain and grit hopefully helped by a bit of oil and new spokes. But ultimately we are getting there as we clocked up nearly 300 miles already.

So far we have been taking a lot of the national cycle routes, which have been through some super country roads off the beaten track, but the next couple of days we plan to be a little more direct with the route to let the legs catch up a bit. Todays route up to Hereford was hardly what we would call an easy relaxing route and we will sleep soundly tonight in a comfy bed.

Fingers crossed we can get the wheel rebuilt in the morning.

One thing I found not too bad with the rain today was the fact that as my back wheel kicked up a lot of spray, Andy (who is still drafting in my slipstream all the way) is hanging back a little. This has the massive benefit of me not being able to hear his constant monologue about his life story year by year. I mean, is anyone really that interested about the time he had his first superman outfit aged 4 years and 6 months !!!!