Up in the hills, the situation wasn’t much better. Crossing things like this takes a bit of faith as you dont know what is under the water, and while clipped in, falling sideways will be disaster. FYI, it was deeper than my pedals.

Trying to avoid the puddles gets pointless after a while once your clothes are saturated with water.

And the roads turn into streams.

Today I was trying to find some more old railway lines.

They did minimal changes to the lines. Here you can see an old station. In other places they didn’t even dig up the stone railway sleepers, just chucking more rocks on top.

Riding along the rain line, the route takes me up to this bridge.

The road on top is so flooded…

people started to taking their canal boats along them.

I am promised no rain tomorrow, but I am getting a bit of a cold, and riding in waterlogged clothes soaked to the bone didn’t help. Tomorrow I will do Salisbury to somewhere past Southampton.

The south west is getting stupid amounts of rain. It is as if god knows I am here.

I decided to cheat and get a train to Bridgwater and cycled from there to Glastonbury.

There are a couple nice areas here, but I had to wait for each shower to pass before taking a photo.

Form 10km out you can see the tor which I was aiming for.

You can see why when it rains, Glastonbury gets rather wet. It an island surrounded by swamps.

Here is what it looks from the top of the tor. Flooding all around. You can walk around the tor winding to the top like the athletes in the olympics, but with rain and 40mph gusts at the top and I was wearing cycling shoes.

Then the rain started again so I backed up on myself and got to the hostel.

Also, you know you are in the south west when your coop looks like this.

Tomorrow is even more rain than today and more easterly winds. I have to get to Bath, and there are no trains anywhere round here.

Onto day 1.

Leaving Plymouth takes you through a nice park which is really is mountain biking route, but the winter tires did their job.

The paths next to the stream are nice as because it has been raining a lot, the streams are lively and there are plenty of waterfalls.

The water was far away at this point, this was nice. Later the lively water was annoying as it was over the roads.

The trail tries to use as much of the old train line as possible. Here is where the remaining track ends and the cycling trail takes over.

To get on some, you have to ride through them before riding up to the start. This is nice because you can see them from both angles.

The route has many many viaducts to go over the vallies

There was a lot of moisture steaming off things like benches.

Entire fields were steaming. It was quire impressive.

And of cause tunnels. If you ride through tunnels, you will get wet as the ceiling dribbles over all who dare to pass through.

Then came Dartmoor which was beautiful, but it has hills. Dear god, so many hills. 20% gradients. Sharp corners on descents.

Now, this is a road. Not some dodgy unmapped road. It is a real road on both Google maps and open cycle maps. Both suggested this route. But OK, I can still use the foot bridge.

But 200m further you come across this. No, There is no way you can ride through that. I did manage to find a foot bridge that got me to a footpath. Generally the roads were crazy. Covered with mud, rotting tree branches and streams flowing down them on gradients.

Finally got to Exeter with the rather scary cycle routes right next to the river..

Exeter seems to be obsessed with guns.

But more annoyingly, they really like cobble stones on roads with 15% gradients.

Back out nd along a horrid dirt path next to the A1 and rail line. Here I was incredibly worried that I would get another puncture and I ran out of inner tubes. I would have to get to smewhere warm and dry to patch the tues I have up. So once I got to Dunbar I thought I should just call it a day. It was nearly 1pm and I would only have an 2.5 hours left before sunset to do a stretch that took nearly 5 hours in the morning. There were no more hills, but it was damn cold, weather report was predicting more sleet and I was getting worried about getting a puncture on the next sectin which looked like more dirt roads.Caught the train to Edinburgh. So, just 60km today. With the total distance sitting at 790km I am annoyed at not breaking the 805km mark needed to get the “Mini Proclaimer” (500 miles). Tomorrow I have a couple hours in the morning before I go to Manchester so I will have a little ride around.

Went to a great friendly pub called the old ship. Then back on the road. I decided to go on the A1 for a sectin as I was keen to get there before more downpours. Had slight drzzle on the way but then just before I got into Berwick there was a trumendous shower of hail and rain. I was just 20 minutes from my destination, but I found a little pub on to shelter in before it stopped and I could finish the trip. By this point, I was completely soaked. Wearing two pairs of socks did not do much good for the cold as I just has more water on my feet then. I could’t even leave the hostel easily as my shoes were soaked. Luckily Berwick hostel was pretty much empty, served nice food and had washing machines.

I did take a video over the humber and lots of pictuers, especially as I saw the bridge being swung, but there is a screwup abut this. I was just about to use the computers available at the hostel to upload them by putting the SD cards into the mini camera and use it as a usb drive. The damn thing realises it is not a card it has seen before and then formats it. So not only have I lost my camera photos, but also the stuff on my android SD drive. I just re-downloaded the maps onto the android card, but I lost a couple movies I wanted to watch. Grrr, and the day was going so well with no screwups.

My knee is starting to ache a bit. Will do some stretches tonight. Tomorrow is a long 140km day btu going east.