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Day 4 Bristol – Somewhere near Gloucester
Weather – Not bad punctuated with heavy rain.
Dr Pepper – Only the one can today, 60p
Terrain – Best yet some good downhills.
Campsite – Another field.
Up to now we had just about kept to schedule but today following a bike disaster we had to accept we were a day behind. By the end of the day Lister had added the words ‘broken’ and ‘bicycle’ to our banned list as well as a whole phrase: ‘my brakes don’t work’. The latter was because we have had to accept that fact that nobody’s brakes worked was the least of our problems! In fact by this point both my brakes only half worked and Lister and Martin only had one working each, but again we never had time to fix them and that is how we finished the ride ten days later with no decent brakes between us.
Straight after leaving the campsite we got a good view of the two Severn bridges, both of which are just about visible in the picture, the old one on the left and new one on the right. Initially we made good progress and soon passed the Gloucestershire border, but shortly after it started raining hard and required not just a mack stop but a wait-and-hope-it-stops-soon stop at a service station where cans of Dr Pepper were an unacceptable 75p. That service station (a Texaco on the A38 towards Gloucester) remains the only place where we did not buy Dr Pepper when we wanted it in the entire country!
The problem we had was that whilst the waterproofs were necessary in the rain as soon as it stopped we had to keep taking them off because blocking out the wind makes it too hot. On more than one occasion we had to stop once to put on the macks then again when it got worse to put on the waterproof trousers. Each stop took time and we knew already from experience that the best way to cover the distance is to keep going continuously even if you’re going slowly.
Directions were again less than perfect and after deciding to take the main road into Stroud instead of the planned smaller roads we turned off too early and bumped into some hills that we may otherwise have avoided. At Stroud we met our first BMW X5, which stood out from the crowd by ignoring us and giving us no space at all. More on that particular car later in Yorkshire.
At Stroud we briefly took shelter in a Tescos then proceeded up the humungous incline out of the town on the A46. Once again they seem to have a different opinion on what an A-road looks like here and we held up a lot of cars who couldn’t overtake on the single carriageway road. As we neared the top of the hill something snapped in my back wheel and it went all over the place, so we pulled off and this was to be the cause of us falling a day behind schedule as it took the rest of the day to sort out and get fixed. We initially thought it was the back axle but it wasn’t although ironically looking back it would have been easier to fix. Instead it turned out to be something which when you look at a bike and think ‘what can go wrong’ you would never think of in a million years. The bearings inside not the wheel but the rear cassette of cogs (the one which makes it spin easily when you’re not pedalling) had broken and completely disappeared. It took us a while to realise the problem since we took it apart and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. We had to stop and think about it before realising there should be a ball race in there at all. Seemingly the whole wheel rests on this in some way so the only option was to find a new one, and we were directed to a bike shop in Brockworth on the outskirts of Gloucester by a man at a local garage. Martin then yet again went in search of this shop while we walked the 6-7 miles after him. This is a view of Gloucester I took as we trudged towards it:
We met Martin who had had no luck this time as the shop sold bikes but not bike parts. They directed us towards Gloucester to a bike shop which we never found, and asking directions again took us right into Gloucester and a Halfords with another helpful young man behind the counter. He seemed anxious to prove that he knew more about bikes than we did but sadly this was not the case. We knew what we wanted – a new race for the cassette – but communicating this to him proved a difficult task. He asked to see the wheel so we brought it in, first he said he had one then he said he didn’t. Then we found out (we think) that he thought we meant the race inside the wheel.
Eventually he claimed that it was not possible to get races for the cassette at all so we established we needed a new cassette. He then told us that that was no good because there was no way of getting the remaining half of the old cassette off after disappearing out the back with it for a while. When we informed him that there was a special tool to get it off (a plug that slots into the centre), he realised his mistake (he must have been trying to get it off with a big wrench) and tried to cover it up by claiming that that was not possible because the plugs were not standard. After restraining ourselves from hitting him we fetched said plug off his own shelf and he finally got it off and sold us a new cassette for £15.99.
It must be stressed that though fairly useless this Halfords employee was happy to help and (finally) helped us using the tools that we did not have free of charge. Unfortunately it seems to be a feature of the company that despite being a large nationwide firm they never have the parts that you need, and even worse still I’m pretty sure if we had found a proper bike shop they would have sold us the race for about £1. Still, at the time we had no choice and of course we had to throw the old cassette away even though there was little wrong with it.
Having wasted all afternoon walking and finding the Halfords which was well off route we cycled up to Cheltenham and resigned ourselves to another night in a field after failing to find a handy campsite. As you can see from the lack of photos the countryside here was uninteresting and we made it to somewhere near Cheltenham (as you will see tomorrow we’re not sure exactly where) and went in a friendly pub and played a few games of cards followed by a few games of pool while we waited for it to get dark.
Later we was standing near a bit of a field debating whether or not it was suitable because it was a bit close to the road. Meanwhile Rich spotted a bloke park his car at one of the houses across the road and approach us. Naturally we thought he was going to tell us to push off but in fact he wanted to welcome us to the area. Somehow he had read our minds and told us it was fine to camp there and people had done it in the past. He seemed a bit nuts, but friendly enough then went one step further by offering us tea and coffee and hot water. In fact he said “if you need anything just knock”, which was a generosity unsurpassed in the rest of the trip. Just as we thought he was about to open a bar for us too he said goodnight and left us to camp in the most bumpy bit of ground in the entire country. It was grassy but there was nowhere fact so a bit if an uncomfortable night that night but again at least it was free. The photo is taken as we were packing up in the morning.