Cycling LeJoG 2017: 07/10/17

"There won't be any hills today. It'll be easy . . . " (we said). "We'll be able to pile on the miles . . . " (we said).

It was certainly (relatively) flat, as we started out through Taunton, then along the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal, across the Somerset Levels, and ended the day along a disused railway. But we failed to pile on the miles - we did quite well, at just short of 50, but tomorrow's route is supposed to be about 65 miles, and our plan to do some of those today failed to materialise. We weren't helped by my failure to take a turn before Bridgwater, and then losing my sense of direction completely when we found ourselves in the town centre. Eventually, the combination of downloaded OS map combined with the GPS on my phone helped me to get us back on track - there are definite advantages to modern technology!

The Bridgwater to Taunton Canal is home to the Somerset Space Walk. I remember cycling past a similar installation between Selby and York 10 years ago - a scale model of the solar system. This one confused us though, because the first 'planet' we noticed was Neptune, then we saw Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Uranus (in that order, I think!) We didn't see the Sun at all. It turns out that there's one Sun, halfway along the canal, with two sets of planets stretching in each direction. How we missed the Sun, I'm not quite sure!

We discovered that there's a problem cycling across a very flat area . . . the wind whips across, and no matter which direction you're travelling, it always seems to be against you!

To round the day off, we found that the second section of the disused railway was closed. The diversion took us along a footpath through a wood, which someone in their wisdom had decided to cover in wood chippings to make it 'bike friendly' . . . whoever they are, they've obviously not been on a bike in a long time!