Day Two - "Are we nearly there yet?"

On paper this was going to be our toughest day. On the bikes it was worse than that. Our internet mapping software told us that we were going to climb about 1700m today. It lied. It lied and it laughed at us as I swore at it. Today’s leg from Golant to Exeter was 122km. We passed 1700m at 85km. I started swearing at it at 90km as I generously gave it 5km of grace for ‘rounding errors’. The more I swore at it, the more it lied to me. By the end it had penalised me to the tune of 2090m of sweary climbing lies.

Despite that. The scenery today was incredibly diverse and quite spectacular. We went from rolling hills to river estuaries, through forests and over Dartmoor – where we saw the famous Dartmoor wild ponies and Lorain DID NOT have a Devonshire ice-cream off Willy. And there were hills, lots and lots of hills. One nasty descent was down a farm track through a forest and we had to descend all the way on the brakes and averaged 6km/h. I felt cheated. Lorain felt sick.

Not only did we have real Devonshire Ice Cream but we also sampled the delights of Cornish cream teas just before we got on the ferry to cross the Tamar from Cornwall to Devon. The ancient rivalry between these two proud counties was still evident. We left Cornwall in bright sunshine and we arrived in Devon 4 minutes later and it was cloudy.