The end!

The hotel in bodmin was fantastic - the barley sheaf - we were provided
with a thoroughly good breakfast, a good discount off the room rate and saw
one of thw biggest dogs I've ever seen:

After leaving bodmin at the very respectable time of 9 and after 3 long
hours found ourselves in Penzance - the book describes this bit of the
journey as 'gently undulating' - we both have a few choice words for the
author!

At this point we were overtaken by the girls (Emily and Emma) who were
driving down to meet us.

10 miles later we arrived at lands end to be greeted by champagne in tiny
lands end glasses.

So after 1 buckled wheel, 3 new tyres, 5 inner tubes (all daves) and 950
miles in 10 days it's been quite an experience and one I don't think either
of us plan on repeating in the near future - but certainly a bit of an
accomplishment and we've raised over 1500 pounds for bowel cancer research
(donations still welcome - www.justgiving.com/Daveandphil ) thanks to
everyone for support, shelter, encouragement and just keeping us
entertained on the Blog comments.

What if the hokey cokey really is what it's all about?

A hard 20 miles from launceston - pretty much all either 8% uphills that
took everything out of you or 8% downhills that you couldn't use properly
because the crosswinds were sending you into the traffic. Arrived at about
6.

I had the hokey cokey going round and round in my head all the way - turns
out it has pretty much the right rhythem for a cadence of 80 - it's
whatever gets you through at this stage.

The hills are alive with the sound of groaning...

Left Taunton at 6:30 to a cold and foggy morning - got on the a38 and just
before we reached tiverton (our first waypoint) Dave had to change what is
rapidly becoming his daily morning puncture - this time he made it through
a continental gatorskin tyre, I think Dave should be their tester.

When we got moving again (after stocking up on tubes) we headed toward
crediton, experiencing some truly comically steep hills. We reached
crediton at about 10 and decided 30 miles was enough to warrant some
breakfast - they didn't have porridge so we settled for the bacon
sandwiches.

As we left crediton the weather became really quite good, the sun was
shining and strong. The road from crediton was nicely paved, quite quiet
and although there were some ups and downs, they were shallow enough to
keep up a decent average. We reached okehampton by about 12:30, where we
had intended to have lunch, but neither of us felt like putting off 45
miles until after we'd eaten, so we made our way on to launceston along the
a30, a terrifying stretch of road where we had to dodge the rocks, nails
and general debris on the side of the road - uncannily Dave didn't get a
puncture here - and the cars were going at 90 mph about 1 foot to the
right.

We passed into Cornwall her and had a little celebration about it being our
last county - I checked the sat nav and realised we were only 4 miles from
launceston - I don't know what our average was but we couldn't have been on
there for much over an hour - we were sat eating lunch by 3 with a
blissfully realistic 20 miles to do after lunch.

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.

Just after breakfast Dave noticed that his spoke was broken so we made our
way to halfords to get it fixed - we got there and had to wait 30 minutes
for the place to open, and then another 45 minutes for the guy to change
the spoke. While we were waiting we met a very nice lady called Anne who
listened as I recounted our journey so far, and promised to make a donation
- thanks Anne!

So we were not on the road again until nearly 10, which felt like a bit of
a waste after getting up so early. We left Stafford and headded toward
wolverhampton taking an hour or so. After all that it was about 11 and I
checked the sat nav to find out we still had 60 miles to go - I suffered a
little depression at this point, the only day I really wanted to get back
early to see em and Josh and at this pace it was going to be our latest
arrival. Annoyed, but using the anger we made it to kiddeminster in about
another hour - I then checked the sat nav again and realised that I'd been
calculating the distance to Gloucester centre, not sally and David's house
- the total remaining for the day now was only 35, considerably more
achievable considering it was only 12 - however before we had time to
celebrate we had to go to halfords again, because Dave's tyre had developed
a kink (a weak spot, not a perversion), so we dumped the bikes and went to
grab some lunch from Sainsbury's.

All that sorted, we left kiddeminster through utterly unremarkable
landscape and just kept going for the rest of the afternoon to arrive at
about 5:30. I kept telling Dave from tewksbury onward that it was only 2
miles or so, it was more like 10 because I'd only ever done it in the car -
I think I started to annoy him...

Unfortunately I had no fiance and son to welcome me with open arms because
they'd had a flat tyre before they left home.

A massive portion of lasgne, a hot shower and an ankle support later we're
both feeling good about the next few days, but still need to work out the
route to Taunton tomorrow.

[no pictures today because there was nothing worth taking pictures of,
every town we went through was full of business parks and chavs]

Breakfast at Stafford

Left at about 6:30 this morning and arrived at Stafford at about 7:40 for
some breakfast.

Bit colder and greyer today and slight headwind.

An early finish

Arrived at the plough hotel in stoke on Trent - definitely the dodgyest
looking place we've stayed at, although actually ok.

We were in a room by 5pm after a reasonable slog from knutsford.

We spent the evening with a few beers and playing pool with some locals -
Dave lost us 2 games by potting the black.

Going to leave early tomorrow, with a view to getting to Gloucester nice
and early so I can spend some time with Josh and em.