14.4 mi / 6.7 mph / 1765 ft. climbing
Home: Jenny’s AirBNB

We had another block of mid-ride off-bike tourism planned for today, so we were up at 6:45am, and I heated up bagel sandwiches on our stove on the patio of our backyard AirBNB while Rett nursed her still-throbbing ankle. The only “kitchen” facilities of our one-room outbuilding were a mini-fridge and an electric kettle, but I had been impressed when I glimpsed an AeroPress coffee maker in one of their photos. They said they got rid of it because no one knew how to use it (not at all a surprise, which also explains why we’ve never seen one in the thousands of AirBNBs we’ve ever looked at), but as fellow AeroPress aficionados, they included some ground coffee special for us so that we could use our own!

The first mile of our ride took us 300 feet up a hill, and with Rett’s sore ankle hurting her confidence, and all the in-town obstacles on the narrow (but not too busy) road, walking most of the way up was the smart choice. It was a rather rude placement for a hill, because immediately after reaching the top, we descended 500 feet down straight to sea-level. Even though it was on an A-road, only one car passed us in the two miles, because it’s a near dead-end, requiring a ferry to take you across the River Dart.

It takes a mere 5 minutes for the ferry to cross the river, so there’s never a long wait, but it was still nice to hit the timing so perfectly that we just rode aboard without even pausing, and we set off seconds later. And £1 was certainly fair deal. A guy with a road bike was on ahead of us, wearing a 2007-vintage “Cycle Oregon” jersey (gifted to him by a relative, he hadn’t actually Cycled Oregon). “It’s rather lumpy ahead”, he says, referring to the hills, which I think is what they mean when they talk about “British understatement”.

A few blocks of riding along the tourist-packed Dartmouth waterfront brings us to our second “ferry” of the day. This is the one that Rett wants to take to visit Dartmouth Castle, because all the reviews say it’s the best way to arrive. She should have looked into it a little more, because she’s surprised when I move to lock our bikes to a railing. “We’re not taking them on the ferry with us? We have to leave them here with all the people around?!” I point to the “ferry” sitting right below us in the water, and since it’s effectively a rowboat with motor that can seat about 6 people, yes, we have to leave the bikes here. I’m not particularly concerned, because someone going through our bags seems less likely with dozens of people around, but it’s certainly always a risk when we leave the bikes out in public for a couple hours.

All the reviews were right, the “ferry” was definitely a great way to approach the Darthmouth Castle, which guards the entry to the bay. But it was also really nice to just be out on a small boat in the blue-green water, with all sorts of activity swirling around.

The “castle” itself has been quite a mix of things over the centuries, but never a residence; military defense of the Dart estuary has always been its main purpose. Many of the displays and structures were related to 19th-century cannons, or the more-interesting 15th-century “Let’s just run an iron chain across the mouth of the estuary”, but no evidence was presented that such defenses were ever used in war (though the deterrent effect can count as “use”, I suppose).

Given Rett’s aching ankle, I assumed that we would return to town via the boat as well, but she was willing to do the mile-long walk instead. I was glad for that, because it gave us a second perspective of the unique town that has grown up along the steep slope diving into the water. Several staircases connect lower narrow streets to higher ones, giving echoes of some Peruvian towns, but since Dartmouth surrounds a blue boat-filled basin rather than a snow-capped mountain, I also got a strong echo of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

We’ve been very impressed with most places we have been through in England so far, but our excitement at many of those places would probably baffle most natives: “so what, it’s just an old pub, there’s one of those in every village?” In contrast, Dartmouth feels like a place that even natives would want to go out of their way to see.

Our bikes were unmolested when we returned, and by that point Rett was so comfortable with their unguarded position that she was happy to just leave them there while we found a place to get some lunch (or, brunch, as it turned out!) Radar showed similar microcells coming through the area that hit us a couple times yesterday, so I ran back out to put rain covers on our bags when one was bearing down on us, but today we ended up with barely a drop.

Finally it was time to move on, and that meant climbing back out of the ditch we had descended into. The first 350 feet up the 450-foot hill could be tackled to ways: the direct main road is shorter, steeper (10-12% the whole way), has more traffic, but also has two lanes (and even a decent sidewalk/path for the climb. The more-winding “neighborhood” would probably be more-comfortable for Rett to walk, which she would likely need to do at some point on either route. So we decided to try a split: I’d charge up the direct route to the point where they met again, and then run down to wherever Rett had gotten to and assist if needed. As usually happens in similar situations, she was already much closer to the top than I thought she’d be, was riding her way up, and had no use for my help.

After a stop at one of the two big grocery stores (Dartmouth has no room for them on the water, so they’re shoved out to the flat top of the hill), we had two miles of A-road riding, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as yesterday’s (again, Dartmouth is an except-for-the-ferry dead-end). Still, we were glad that we we able to get off it and onto the minor road in short order, but some of that excitement was due to ignorance. The A-roads are much busier, but they also find much flatter routings. The “cost” of turning onto almost-empty roads for the rest of the way was “every hill is now 13%”. As the Cycle Oregon guy said, rather lumpy. So I ended up doing some bike ferrying to help Rett up the steepest bits, but really it wasn’t much at all. Even with her ankle, she was able to still ride or push up most of them.

We encountered another dreaded “Road Closed” sign in a small village, but after some scouting it turned out to just be a couple of guys rebuilding a stone wall, so it was no problem to pass through. Most of the roads were of the one-car-wide, hedge-enclosed variety, so we negotiated some tight squeezes pressed against the green walls (including one where the white-haired driver offers “that looks like a right heavy load!” and pauses to chat for a minute in an extremely-British-countryside scene). We also had a couple cases where cars reversed upon seeing us, back to the closest slightly-wider portion of road so we could both get through. And finally the lone asshole, driving a pickup truck (the stereotype holds on this side of the pond!) who honks and doesn’t even slow down as he and Rett manage to barely slide past each other without contact, who Rett then tells off, and then he’s reversing, for reasons that were the opposite of courtesy, and…at least no one got run over or shot. (And at least the side of his truck got combed by the hedge-branches and not my wife’s bones!)

Our rough initial idea had been to target one of the many campgrounds in these rural hills, but given yesterday’s unpleasantness (and the roughness of camping here), I determined that it was in our best interests to find a roof. Luckily a full-kitchen, stand-alone AirBNB appeared yesterday evening for a decent price (off-grid yurts and things like that had been the best option previously), so at 3:40pm we rolled into our comfortable shelter. Our hostess stopped by from the main house, and said she was worried that we had gotten dumped on by the rain that hit them, so she was surprised to learn that we’d been lucky to dodge it all. At which point then she didn’t have to feel guilty for being thankful for the rain that they’ve very much been needing on their drought-stricken farm! But even with no rain, it was a windy and cool evening, so I was even more glad that we weren’t camping. With a good chicken stir-fry dinner in our bellies, making it alive into Plymouth tomorrow was sounding a lot more likely than it felt yesterday.