21 days in July – the 2005 Douglas Bader Foundation E2E ride re-blogged

Grand start to the day. The ‘landlord’ of the B&B we stayed in last night reneged on the agreed price and started haggling for more money per head. Turned out he is not VAT registered, refused to give a signed receipt, and would only accept cash. Hmm, draw your own conclusions. What a lovely chap… Anyway, once on the road it started raining and it didn’t stop until about 4pm. Not many chances for photo’s today! The route took us over the southern part of Bodmin Moor and the hills were relentless. Only 44 miles today but the amount of climbing and the steepness of some of the hills really did wear you down. The upside was that although we were soaked we were very very warm! One picture I got today was Adrian on his handcycle in a rare dry(ish) spot. I’m now convinced that Dave and Adrian will make it all the way to John O’Groats. The bike Adrian’s riding is Dave’s old one – not as swish as the “stealth” version above but still a nice machine. Cornwall done – tomorrow Dartmoor…

Looking back I’m more than a tad embarrassed I ever doubted that hand-cyclists Dave and Adrian might not get all the way to John O’Groats. Prior to this ride Adrian had completed an 1100 mile sea kayak trip from Vancouver in Canada to Juneau in Alaska. I’ll get to Dave’s exploits later. A brief respite from the showers in Minions Teashop on Bodmin Moor. I remember arriving at The Coach House just outside Tavistock, the bar being right by the entrance, and later making a resolution to drink a pint of something more water based first in future. IIRC they did a good steak, and we didn’t know it at the time but we were going to need something quite substantial to keep us going the next day. Not sure what Carol and Adrian ordered.   The Route: click on the map to enlarge, alternatively an interactive map with option to download gpx track available here. There’s quite a large discrepancy in the milage for this day – 37 miles on the map versus 44 reported. Not sure why that is and can’t recall if I was using my bike computer or not; no explanation for it at this point, perhaps it’ll come out in the wash…