LEJOG Day 4 – Tuesday 28th May

We let ourselves have a lie in and take the morning slower this morning because we’d had a tough 3 days of cycling. When we did get up, we had some breakfast and got ready. Harry had a leftover fajita for breakfast!

Unfortunately our washed clothes hadn’t fully dried, but at least they smelt better! 

We left just after 10am with a shorter day of cycling ahead of us.

The first 55km we rode through the Somerset levels, which were lovely long flat roads that we welcomed after the last few days of constant hill climbing. 

After 55km we made it to Cheddar. Harry had only told me yesterday that today we would be climbing Cheddar Gorge – I didn’t know what this was so I looked it up and a wave of anxiety came over me… another mega hill to climb (250m elevation in one climb)!

Anyway, what a lovely village Cheddar was! We timed it well as we had planned to stop in Cheddar for a lunch stop before climbing the gorge and as we found a cafe to stop at it started pouring with rain. To be fair, we’d been very lucky that it had stayed dry all morning with how the forecast had looked.

I had a vegan sausage roll and Harry had a pasty and then we both had a cake – our first of the trip (we suddenly realised how had we got 4 days into this trip without cake?!).

We waited for the rain to stop and then started the climb. It was actually far better than expected – especially with lots of photo stops on the way up! And wow, it was pretty breath taking! 

We rolled down the other side and then climbed one more tough hill up to another amazing view.

After that we rolled the last 10km into Bristol – not so fun getting through all the traffic in Bristol but we made it in one piece to our friend Oli’s flat (Oli Hook from university). 

Oli had very kindly made us a veggie chilli in the slow cooker for dinner which we were very excited for. We had bought some cheddar in Cheddar (we had to!), so we had some of that grated on our chilli – de-LISH!

We caught up with Oli and heard all about his recent trip to Vietnam and also got to do some more washing and use his massage gun to help our legs recover a bit!

Summary:

Distance cycled: 85.55km

Elevation climbed: 790m

Time pedaling: 4h 39 mins

Highlight of the day: Cheddar Gorge and being looked after by Oli

Lowlight of the day: More rain – when will it stop?!

County count: 4 (Bristol added to the list – apparently its own county)

To donate: https://www.justgiving.com/page/barry-towler-cycle-lejog