Day 4

Tuesday, June 13
Bawdrip to Monmouth
119km

Longest day of the trip thus far.  Definitely less climbing than the past few days, but still a few steep grades throughout the day.  We also got rained on for the first time...but just a little.

The ride started out on the Sommerset Levels...which, as the name suggests, are dead flat.  It was nice to ride on a straight, flat road without any hedges.

At about 25km the flattness ended as we climbed through the Cheddar gorge.  It was scenci, with tall, rocky rock faces and switchbacks, but the grade wasn't as bad as I had expected.  It also had nothing at all to do with chese...which was disappointing. 

There were several other "unmarked" climbs today that were much tougher than the gorge.  A few of them were slick with manure, making it easy to spin your rear tire if you tried to stand up while climbing.  This gave new meaning to the expression, "the roads were crap".

We stopped for lunch at the Kings Arms pub in Easton-in-Gordano.  Just as we got in the door, it started to rain.  After a slow lunch, and a bit of extra waiting, we headed out into the wet.  Luckily, we only got rained on for about 5 minutes, so it wasn't too bad.

We crossed two large bridges in the afternoon: Avonmouth Bridge and Severn Bridge - into Wales.  We rode across both in special cycling lanes, which gave some nice views.  My mother was born is Wales, and this is the first time that I have visited here.  It is beautiful.  Lots of rolling, forrested hills with little streams at the bottom.

The final decent into Monmouth was lovely.  Beautiful valley panoramas and thrillingly steep road.  Unfortunately the pavement was still wet from the rain, so I didn't try to take the corners too quickly.  But otherwise, it reminded me a lot of France.

Before dinner at Andy's house yesterday, we did a load of laundry.  The sun was shining when we arrived at camp today, so all of our clothes are out drying on a picnic table.