Such great
views!

Another great day. A lot less hilly then yesterday, but still some. On a note, yesterday I lost some 400 meters to Garmin, as it was paused because of pushing and/or being too slow. Need to check that. Went through the north of the Dartmoor, on a beautiful bike lane, went down and then up. Quite a bit. In the end I was super tired, looked to the right. And what did I see? A herd of Shetland ponies. That happened now a few times, getting up a hill and then having a great animal surprise. On one street a driver was driving right to me and was asking whether I'd do the #lejog and that he lives in Carlisle, which I would pass. Generally, people seem to be a lot more friendly and chatty. Everytime there's an interaction with a car, they wait, or I wait, there's actually a smile on their faces. Which I haven't had too much before. Another great camping. This time it was fully booked, bank holidays, but the pitches were super generous and seperated by wild flower meadows. No cars on the ground, but people had huge tents. Seemed more like people camping for the first time, a little bit of a hipster camp ground.

A great ride with an even better ending. I started with a different goal in view. Planned something like over 100km but realised that it would be too hard with the climbs, specially a big one in the end. Changed booking mid day and decided to stay close to Glastonbury at @stationfarmglastonbury . What a great decision! Glastonbury was nice, but frankly, I’ve mainly seen a pub where I could roll in my bike. But Station Park Farm was my favourite campsite so far! Bethan and Karl have been the best hosts ever. They went beyond what one could expect. Immediately a chair was offered, a tour of the beautiful farm given and generally smiles! 😍 they even helped me out with a dinner, mostly with things grown at the farm. I‘ll be back!

Nice, and uneventful day. Followed by a rest day in Bristol. Woke up early and wanted to see whether the shops I need would be open. Some meters in my walk I saw a group of people hanging out and a fire burning. Got like SF SoMa vibes. Turned around to make myself a coffee to see what was going on. If I walk into a sketchy area, I want to know and not just wander around. Turned out I was living closeby Turbo Island. Bristol was not my favourite city, but i got all I needed. Shoes, a foldable kettle, gas and coffee. And some kimchi!

Biking from Bristol over a bridge. Never sure what I think of them, but in the end, always a bit scared. Maybe due to a little accident I had on the Golden Gate Bridge, but this one was empty, so no problems. Then I went through beautiful mountains down a valley to Tintern Abbey. Reminded me almost of the Alps. Ended on a small campsite in the middle of nowhere with a great panorama.

The most exciting thing, I finally made my first coffee! I got this excellent little foldable kettle from SeaToSummit and it worked like a charm. Getting coffee is essential for me, if I don't get it, I get a bit cranky. This is solved now. Still a bit scared of the gas tanks though, but well... Ride was, as far as I can remember, uneventful and nice. I remember this one part where they're planting quite some trees, which was great to see. Oh, and I met two bike touring people who looked actually cool once I left my camp spot. We shared the road for exactly 100m. Camping in the evening was great, with a surprise visit of cows taking a bath in the river beside my tent.

And another thing. I love the public footpaths. Great idea. But mostly not bikeable, which my route is sometimes neglecting. Will need to look up the history behind them, and the one of the #bridleways as well.

Mountains are slowly coming. The first days here in the UK were sometimes really choppy, steep climb, steep decline. Generally it was beautiful, but this can be exhausting. Specially so steep, that I could only push. But now some longer ascends are coming. Where I don’t need to push, exhaust myself a bit and get rewarding views! These make me very happy! The campsite where I arrived was full of crows. Note to myself, as I didn’t take any pictures there. And in many villages you‘ll find the old phone booths, now used as a station for defibrillators. Pretty cool. And pretty!