The Road to Chepstow

Mercilessly hot, momentarily shady, mercifully flat.

We left early, without breakfast, in an attempt to avoid the heat of the day and soon were on a pretty cross country trail, which came to an abrupt stop just before Uphill, where the kissing gate appeared to be padlocked and the field gate had a huge chain and padlock preventing unauthorised use.  How can they block off a public right of way like this? Can we lift our bikes over the gate?  What can we do?  I pushed at the kissing gate, detected some movement and sheepishly had to acknowledge that the padlock was not actually preventing access.  Needless to say the others were very understanding of this oversight and hardly brought it up again later in the day.  

Uphill had a pretty little castle on top but it did not delay us long, and we were soon in Weston Super Mare, by which time we were hungry and took a breakfast, earlier than originally planned, at the Victorian Cafe on the seafront.  Though it was only 08:30, it was already uncomfortably hot and we struggled to find any proper shade, while we each consumed an enormous breakfast bap with lemonade as well as our usual hot drinks.

Progress was slow in the heat, the Avon Bridge was not a pretty sight, and the industrial suburbs of Bristol and Avonmouth were sadly depressing.  We made a diversion to Severn Beach, where we took some lunch in the shade at Shirley’s cafe.  Tim’s Garmin registered 50 degrees Celsius and we all thought how marvellous to live in climate-change Britain.

Back on the bikes again and the route up the Severn Estuary turned quite pretty, but it was disappointing to be diverted again for roadworks as we rode first North then South again to get to Severn Bridge.  We got safely to our digs at the “First Hurdle” and, in spite of the rubbish beer, we planned to enjoy the best pizza in Wales there, even though we had to settle for a late table booking.

Events conspired against us however. First there was complete power cut in the pub, which threatened the beer supplies, even if pizza could still be produced in their open fired oven.  If that wasn’t enough, after Den had berated the staff in the First Hurdle for not bringing him another towel as agreed, and Tim & Jim had completed their historical research on the church next door (built just after the Norman Conquest, with beautiful tympanum arch) we embarked on a short walk to research the best beer available in the town centre.  Tim and Jim soon agreed that this was the Butty Bach at the George Hotel, where the barman was entertaining as well as good at presenting the house menu.  Close to starving again, and with no prospect of a pizza for over an hour, there wasn’t really any prospect of us waiting any longer.

We got back to the First Hurdle to find it candle-lit, and with staff relieved to see the last of their customers for the evening.  We were told that the problem was specific to their building and the power company would be putting in an emergency supply later that evening, so there would be no problem with breakfast. I rather doubted it.

At 11:30 I was awakened from a deep sleep with the TV blaring and Arnold Schwarzenegger seemingly about to seduce a woman I did not recognise even though the film must have been made in the 70s and she looked vaguely familiar.  It took me about 5 minutes to realise I couldn’t turn the TV off because Den had hung his shirt over the remote sensor.   I sorted it out, while Den slumbered on, completely undisturbed.

Llantrisant