36.0 mi / 9.75 mph / 1209 ft. climbing
Home: Tanpits Cider Farm Camping

We would depart the Mendip Hills down the same Cheddar Gorge that we hiked along yesterday, but on the bikes we would follow the road at the bottom rather than the rim at the top, for a completely different perspective. We actually saw some of the ground-level perspective yesterday, since our Uber drove up the canyon to return us to our AirBNB, but nothing highlights the limits that a car’s roof places on your view than driving through a steep-walled canyon!

The farm next to ours was preparing for a festival the next weekend. A wholesome harvest festival? No, ArcTanGent, a big four-day international post/prog-metal festival, featuring a bunch of weirdo bands right up my strange alley! Chicago favorites Russian Circles and Pelican have both appeared multiple times, as well as bands like Meshuggah, Anathema, or the recently-mentioned Opeth. It was a little disorienting to think what it would feel like to travel to the fest from “normal life” (a farm in rural England? ok, I fly into London, then maybe take a train, but I’d probably be camping on-site, so…?) vs. just happening to cycle past it in our abnormal lives (already carrying everything we’d need to live on site for the four days!) “Luckily” the lineup wasn’t especially good for me this year, and it was already sold-out, so I didn’t really feel like I was missing out on a golden opportunity. Still, it was a good reminder that I’m now on the continent that has produced most of my favorite music, with a much higher density of live performances of that music than the US has ever supported.

We returned to the same Sainsbury’s grocery store we walked to yesterday. This time there was a young “rough sleeper” (a rather British sort-of-euphemism for “homeless person”) sitting on the ground near the entrance, staring blankly at the space in front of him. So far in the UK we’ve seen a few other “rough sleepers”, and tents erected in out-of-the-way areas, but certainly no more than in comparable areas in the US. And here, as a woman was exiting the store, she engaged him in conversation, asking/informing him about services that might be available to him (which he brushed off as possibilities). “ok, well just know that whenever I see you, I’m going to keep checking in on you,” she said supportively. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a similar interaction in the US (and it also seemed like he had a few food items on the ground next to him that other customers had given him).

Upon exiting Cheddar, we were into “The Levels”, an area whose plural name implies multiple changes of elevation, though in actuality it refers to a single, unusually-flat-for-England bottomland (Rett helpfully reminded me how “The Flats” is a similarly pluralization that refers to a singular thing). Cris-crossed by canals to channelize the water that would otherwise gather here, it gave us nearly 20 miles of much-needed easy riding (much of it tailwind-aided too), following a lot of more-challenging-than-expected riding in England so far. We’d best not expect any more of that flatness though!

Departure from the quiet rural roads and entry into the “suburbs” of Taunton was more-abrupt than expected, so for lunch we were forced to set up our chairs on the sidewalk of a busy A-road, tucked into the blackberry brambles for the only bit of shade. The good news was that we could just reach behind us and eat as many sweet, ripe blackberries as our stomachs could handle (which made it especially funny that Rett had bought a container of raspberries at the store this morning to have with lunch!)

Watching the heavy bursts of traffic on A-road all during lunch didn’t make us excited to get back on the bikes, but I eventually was able to understand the pattern, and by launching ourselves into a gap, and using the flat/downhill, it ended up being much calmer mile than feared. And then we were able to switch to bike infrastructure of the usual varying quality, including one road that had two-way off-street bike paths on both sides of the road (maybe move one of those paths to a spot that needs it more!)

We were able to shift back onto rural roads for the final bits, but those final bits also included some tough climbs up to a 13% grade. I’ve been frustrated for the last week or more, because a bug in the RideWithGPS mapping software I use has prevented zooming in on the elevation profiles. That means that when I plan a route, it’s very easy for a steep-but-short hill to hide inside the jagged lines without me being able to see it. So by the time we reached the Co-op grocery store near our campground, Rett wisely went in and just bought us drinks to sit and cool off with (80°F isn’t the 90s of the heat wave days, but it’s still hotter than it should be) before going back for our proper shopping.

Our campground was another one where it was “just go pick any (non-electric) pitch that you’d like”. Well, the trees of the “orchard” we were camping in were dying at a rapid pace, so none of the unoccupied, well-delineated squares were out of the hot sun. I returned to the office to inquire what she really meant by “anywhere you’d like”, and she confirmed that since we were on bikes and wouldn’t be blocking anyone, we could literally take any out-of-the-way spot we wanted (in a camping culture we aren’t familiar with, it’s nice to be able to communicate in a language we are familiar with). So I tucked us into a spot behind the squares that, while not quite the dome inside the willow, still had overhanging trees that would provide the only all-day shade in the whole place. And on top of that there was even a rough bench built into the ground there, providing the only non-ground surface in the campground! Unfortunately as I was putting up the tent, it quickly became covered in spatters of what seemed like grape jelly, so I immediately took precautions to get all of our stuff as covered as possible while I assessed. Luckily it seemed like it was just one berry-eating bird angry that we were setting up in his spot, and he gave up after that single assault failed to chase us off.