2009-Jun-22 by Gregory Williams.

Early on in today’s trip I passed over the Derriton Viaduct just outside Holsworthy, whilst following National Cycle Route 3. A Mills type milepost just beyond the viaduct told me that Bude and the Atlantic Ocean was just 10 miles away.
I caught my first glimpse of the Atlantic a few miles before reaching Bude. A bit further down the road I reached another milepost, this time a McColl type, stating that Land’s End is 125 miles away. I won’t be following the exact route that those miles are measured over, but it’s great to see that it’s now signposted! Slightly further still, in the village of Marhamchurch, NCR3 divides to head both towards Bude and a shorter and less hilly inland route via Week St. Mary.

I reached Bude via a canalside stretching of NCR3. The route then leaves Bude via a coastal road with spectacular views. This is relatively busy, but shortly after Widemouth Bay the route then follows a much quieter, but much hillier road. At one point along here it has a 30% gradient uphill.

I lunched at Wainhouse Corner, where NCR3 crosses the A39. A few miles further the route joined up again with the Week St. Mary braid of NCR3. A little further still the route crosses the former portion of an airfield. There was quite a strong headwind here, which died down almost immediately after I turned off towards the adjacent evergreen woods which cover some of the former airfield site.

The route then skirts the edge of Bodmin Moor along the way. Again some fantastic scenery. It also passes what is presumably a chimney from an old tin mine.

Unfortunately I’ve not had Internet connectivity over the past few days. I managed to get a few updates uploaded via a 9600bps dial-up connection via a bluetooth connection using my mobile phone, but that’s extremely slow. So, I’ve found a wifi hotspot at the post office in St. Breward and have brought my blog up-to-date from there. Now to bring the mapping up-to-date too.

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2009-Jun-22 by Gregory Williams.

According to my plans there was approximately 50% more climbing to do today compared with yesterday, and in slightly fewer miles. That said there weren’t any sections of continuous lengthy climbs like yesterday, so I managed quite well.

I had lunch at a pub in the village of Bow, a little ahead of the halfway point in today’s leg. Whilst waiting for my food I quickly befriended a cat, who enjoyed several minutes of strokes. I thought, of course, of my own cat Charley taking her ten-week holiday at a cattery near to home.

By the time I reached the village of Sheepwash, a few miles from tonight’s accomodation, I was running ahead of schedule with quite a bit of spare time. So I decided to visit their “Strawberry Tea” event going on in the village. This turned out to be strawberries and tea, rather than strawberry flavoured tea. I don’t like tea, so opted for some squash instead. I got chatting to some people there and they were all very interested to hear about this Three Corners Cycle Ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation. I left with a further £50 of generous sponsorship. I also took the opportunity to plug the OpenStreetMap project and showed how I had OSM data on my GPS.

Unfortunately tonight’s B&B again doesn’t appear to have Internet access again, so the blog and mapping backlog is building up even more.

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