Back
Previous Day
Next Day
Day 2 Altarnun – Taunton
Weather – Windy still, cold with some rain. Dr Pepper – Availability good but expensive, 70p spotted. Terrain – Seemingly even hillier than yesterday Campsite – Hmm, more later.
Due to an eventful day to say the least I am writing this the following day at Cheddar. We set of half an hour later than before at 8.30 because of our random wanderings the last night and the fact that we had made the distance in plenty of time. So back onto the A30 and we soon hit hills every bit as steep as yesterday. We crossed into Devon early on and passed through Launceston and Okehampton which were at the top of a large hill and at the bottom of an even bigger one respectively.
At Launceston we bought some Dr Pepper for breakfast and sent some postcards at a post office. After commenting that we wished we had time to spend in this beautiful town we ploughed back on the A30. Between there and Okehampton the route turned onto country lanes as there were some parallel but we decided since there was not heavy traffic on the A30 to continue and try to get there a bit faster. When we return in the car we will go the scenic route. Turning off the A30 we stopped to check directions on the map and were approached by a farmer type who had just been engaged in apparently navigating his wife and her Volvo backwards out of a farm exit. Without any prompt he asked if we were going to Okehampton then pointed us down a lane which was closed to traffic. It’s amazing what local knowledge can do for you and we sped down to the town cutting off the corner of the new road.
Okehampton town centre (above) was another nice place but with no time to spare we set off up the enormous hill out of the town. Here the directions got serious because we were finally off the A30 and going cross country via Copplestone and Credition, where we were almost run off the road by a bus driver who clearly had no idea of the location of the back of his vehicle. This was a long hard stint and by the time we finally found a (steep) downhill into Tiverton Lister has henceforth banned the word ‘hill’ until we all forget again. It is before Tiverton that we got our first puncture (below) as Martin crashes down a huge hole in the road and the tube bursts. The tube had a bit of a split and another hole next to it, a pattern that was to recur throughout the trip. At the time we ignored this and used one of the two spares we had brought so replaced it as quickly as possible and moved on, then crossed the border into Somerset.
We bought dinner in Tiverton but that was where our luck ran out and the start of a series of disasters that ended in us spending a night in a field near the M5. Earlier we had decided that despite having a much harder day than before (or seemingly so) we would try for the furthest two of our four possible campsites. This was our first mistake and it was 7pm when we completed the extra 10-12 miles and found that one campsite was non-existent and at the other we were greeted by large signs that said ‘no tents’. On top of this due to a navigational error we ended up cycling about a mile up a mountain three times as we thought we were in a different place to where we were. In any case the warden at the ‘no tents’ campsite explained that he had no toilet facilities and so could only accept caravans, and pointed us in the direction of a camping site “about three miles down the road”. About a hundred yards later there was a huge crunch and Richard’s back gears bent and got stuck. It was getting late so we sent Martin on to find the campsite with the tent to book us in while we executed temporary repairs on Lister’s bike involving taking the wheel off, taking broken links out of the chain and bending the gears back. Again we set off, Lister with only one gear to use, and found the campsite just a mile or so on. Martin had missed it and I phoned him up to get him back to find that he was in Taunton (6 miles away). As I spoke to Martin, Richard had been looking for a warden or owner of the campsite with no luck, and decided too late that it was closed. I phoned Marin back to cancel but he already switched his phone off (we were saving battery power) so we met him halfway to Taunton coming the other way much to his astonishment. Now it was getting dark so we resigned to a night in a field and headed into the nearest pub to discuss tactics.
The pub was called the Rumwell Inn, so we took this picture because it’s similar to Runwell where our scout troop is back home. The food was great and a reasonable price, although we did run into trouble when Martin was asked for ID because he didn’t have any on him. On leaving the pub we had a problem as we were now on the outskirts of Taunton, so we had to walk through the town centre and out the other side in what seemed like the middle of the night. Finally when we left civilisation we turned off the route and found a handy field right next to the M5. At least it was free and also flat, but we left nice and early (up at 5.30 left by 6.30) in case the owner was not too impressed. This picture is us packing up in the morning, in fact it was light but the flash has reflected off the headlights!
