Dave, Dave, Dave...

It was nice to wake up this morning with Josh between Emma and I - back to
normality, if only for a few hours.

After checking the route last night and finding Taunton was only 80 miles
away, we had breakfast this morning (again the winning combination of
porridge and bacon sandwiches - good porridge David!) feeling positive
about an early finish.

We did the first 20 miles in good time and then Dave got another puncture!
That's 3 this trip on the same wheel. Upon further inspection the whole
tyre had been punctured and we needed a new one - unfortunately we were
about 10 miles away from the centre on Bristol, so we put a new tube in and
kept it slow. We were told of a bike shop in thornbury (about a mile back)
so we made our way there to find that the guy was in Spain and his shop was
closed. So I'm again afraid to admit we had to get a taxi from there to
filton where the next nearest bike shop was - we got dropped off after
about 5 miles at a bike shop that we found out (after the taxi pulled off)
that they didn't have the right size tyre or type of tube. So it was a mile
or so walk up the road to the next one where they were very friendly and
did have some equipment in stock. The owner was very insistent on showing
me the way through Bristol and on to Taunton - he even drew me a map, I
didn't have the heart to tell him I already knew and had a sat nav anyway.

We were finally on the way again about 2 and a half hours after the tyre
burst - and still with 50 miles to go - we had had a sandwich in thornbury,
so we just cracked on and started eating into the miles. It was slow going
with some large hills out of Bristol, but also some cracking downhills
which got us up to the highest speed so far for the trip (38 with a
headwind).

A fairly uneventful 4 hours later, we arrived in Taunton (so much for the
early finish). We're both wary of tomorrow - the guys on the bike shop to
great pleasure in telling us that Taunton to bodmin would be the hardest
day. So we're off for another early start to try and get to Exeter for
breakfast.

The ankle is now swollen, but other than that we are both intact - off to
try and find an all you can eat Chinese now, I think I might be able to get
good value for money.