Day 5 - South Molton to Bridgewater

Thursday, May 26, 2011 (50 miles)
I left South Molton in heavy rain and strong SW winds. I felt like a fledgling leaving a nest. Mr and Mrs Colman had been great hosts in a lovely house, even putting my water bottles in the fridge and drying my rinsed out cycling clothes. Mr Colman told me not to go the way I was going “because they used it for the King of the Mountains competition in the Tour de France”.
It took an one hour and 20 minutes to do the first six miles. Normally I would do about 14 miles on a flat surface. Then I got on to Exmoor. I passed sign at a cattle grid saying “Slow down, Exmoor ponies” but I didn’t see any. The wind was howling though and I imagined the ponies barrelling across the moor, head over heels, in front of it. Crossing Exmoor was dramatic in this weather but there was a hedge which stopped the worst of the wind. It ran out with three miles to go so I put on my woolly hat from North Ronaldsay and my jumper and went for it. Near the end the rain stopped and a single ray of sun burst through. The larks immediately threw themselves into the sky and sang their heads off; I may have looked like Kenneth More in The 39 Steps but this was fantastic. I was still cold though and looked forward to a cup of tea at Withypool. The teashop was shut. As I sat at its outside table, two gamekeepers in green tweed pulled up in an ancient Land Rover. They looked like they had just driven in from the 19^th century and were just as unsmiling as the Glamis lot. I did get coffee (and scones with clotted cream and jam) in Winsford 4 miles further on though. It had thatched cottages, a real ford and Ernest Bevin was born there.
Next came the Summerway Hare Path which was another huge push. After that, things were a littler easier to Raleigh Cross Inn where I had a proper hot lunch. I passed a straggled out group of walkers doing five marathons in five days to raise money for injured soldiers coming home from Afghanistan.
I made it into my top gear for the first time after this but soon after Bishop’s Lydeard I started climbing up into the Quantocks. There were a few isolated farms but not as we know them. These were all from the 17^th century and had been restored to mint condition, an affluent place indeed. I was following lanes too narrow for anything more than a car and the canopy overhead made them tunnels. The wind was whipping the branches back and forward and the sun dappling on the road was quite hypnotic. I had time to notice these things ’cos the hill was so steep I could barely move my bike up it. After an hour and a half of this I got to the top, completely knackered.

Exmoor. Brrrr.

A Quantocks farm

The bike found it’s own way to Bridgewater and my B&B, luckily, my first big town, with flats and Asda and everything.