26.9 mi / 8.3 mph / 1724 ft. climbing
Home: Ubley Farm AirBNB

It’s been unusually (and for Rett, uncomfortably) warm ever since we arrived in the UK, but now another proper 2-day heat wave is coming that cranks the dial up from highs in the low-to-mid 80s to the low-to-mid 90s. We didn’t want to be riding through those conditions, but also escaping the heat is difficult in a country where air conditioning barely exists. Our default after Bath had been moving on northwest to the bigger city of Bristol, but the only accommodations there were low-rise apartments that seemed likely to heat up quickly.

So I was intrigued when I found a rural farmhouse AirBNB, southwest in the Mendip Hills, where the unit was essentially a stone walk-out basement, built like a cave into the hillside. It looked like it would have the thermal mass to fight off the heat, the only problems were that it was in the middle of nowhere (also a nice benefit!), so we would need to bring two days of food with us, and there were no cooking facilities beyond an electric kettle. But those things should be manageable, and really the only thing we’d had drawing us to Bristol was that our Chicago-area Renaissance Faire is named after it. So our current lack-of-direction can be frustrating at times, but in this case, we were glad to have the flexibility to let our direction be determined by wherever we could find a comfortable place to sleep.

One other advantage of our change-in-plan to head southwest out of Bath is that it allowed us to make use of a genuinely-helpful bit of cycling infrastructure: the Two Tunnels Greenway, that enables an easy exit from the steep hills that surround the city. Opened in 2013, it’s a rail trail with a quarter-mile tunnel quickly followed by a mile-long tunnel, that then pops you out in the countryside, with a the trail continuing for a few more miles.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, we passed within half a mile of the Palladian Bridge that’s featured on the cover of my all-time favorite album, Opeth’s Morningrise. So Rett got to do her Bridgerton tourism in Bath, but I missed out on my Swedish progressive death metal tourism. Oh well! (we were deep underground when we passed by it anyway.)

The rude ejection from the low-slope rail line and back onto the steep ups-and-downs of the rural roads at least came with an upside: it brought us through the small village of Wellow, and a confirmation that we could enjoy “unknown” villages just as much as “famous” ones like Castle Combe. Here, we explored the Church of St. Julian, a church at least as impressive as Castle Combe’s, but since we were the sole visitors (probably all day), the experience, from the moment I heaved open the massive wooden door, was much more intimate and satisfying.

Arriving into Radstock, Rett’s energy was collapsing due to hunger, and that led to despair because she took it as another sign that her body’s fuel-processing has gone haywire. But, as we stopped to have a snack, I pointed out that we were actually a good four hours past breakfast, so pulling out the chairs and having a proper lunch would be completely normal. We were soon to start climbing up into the Mendip Hills, so energy would be important regardlass of what time it was!

We soon reached a “Road Closed” sign along our route, but not even 20 seconds after we pulled over and I began looking at the map for alternatives, a driver stopped and asked if he could assist. Upon learning what we were trying to figure out (“is the road we need to take closed, or is it some other road”), he pulled ahead and got out of his car to look at my map. “Oh, no, you’re all good, you’ll turn at the second right, and go around the church on your left, while the work is at a roundabout to your left”. Wow, helpful and confidence-inspiring. Thank you sir!

We reached our AirBNB just as the temperature was crossing 90°F for the day, and I was thrilled to discover that my theory had paid off: it was 69°F inside, like walking into air conditioning! There was also plenty of space outside to cook on our camp stove. However there was no good place to hang our sink-laundry out there in a way that it would be save from the goats, too bad because it would have dried in about 10 minutes.

It was just a few days ago that we’d learned Spain was about to get a total solar eclipse, and today was that day. Maybe we should have made more of an effort to pop over there, but, with the caveat that even the best partial eclipses are nothing compared to a total eclipse, we were treated to the best eclipse I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Despite my hometown of Chicago being near two total eclipses in 2017 and 2024, and now personally being within 500 miles of another total eclipse in 2026, it’s a surprise to see that the previous 40 years of my life were much more of a drought. It looks like the best possibility for me was May 10th, 1994, with 88% obscuration in Chicago. And I have no memories of that one; it was midday near the end of my junior year of high school, and although it looks like the weather was clear, apparently they didn’t let us all outside to blind ourselves? I’m guessing the 43%-obscured one in 1986 (when I was a science-interested 9-year-old) is the first one I learned about, but 43% isn’t anywhere near enough to creating an obvious visual change. I do have some photos of the shadows through my miniblinds looking strange during the equally-obscured 43% Christmas Day eclipse in 2000. And then the 2017 eclipse, though total in St. Louis, was actually slightly-less obscured (87%) in Chicago than the 1994 event, and I have photos of people on top of the parking deck at my office…failing to see anything through the cloudy skies.

With this eclipse reaching its maximum of 93% at 7:15pm, that meant that the afternoon heat had relaxed enough for Rett to come out and experience it with me (and as it reached maximum, I’m pretty sure the eclipse itself helped hasten the cooling!) In the early stages, there wasn’t much to note, but by the time it crossed something like 80% coverage, the light and the atmosphere had definitely gotten strange. Everything just seemed a bit dim, and I kept wanting to take off the sunglasses that I wasn’t wearing. Except the shadows were oddly sharper. A flock of birds went by who were definitely confused.

Who would have thought that this reliably-cloudy country would gift us the most-affecting eclipse we’ve seen in our lives? But the best part was quietly sharing the experience with my wife, describing to each other the patterns that we were seeing move through the cloudlike-shadows, reveling in the country setting turned strangely-beautiful, and just being together in a way that took us out of our habitual ways of being “together”.

Still ought to make an effort to see a total eclipse one of these years though, only have 20 or so left in our lifetime!