33.0 mi / 8.2 mph / 1924 ft. climbing
Home: Alex’s AirBNB

The guy from the organic oils shop had convinced us that heading up and over the bald hills of Dartmoor National Park wouldn’t bring enough enjoyment to outweigh the suffering, so we’d instead try to see another side of England by heading straight south along the coast. The first actual rain of our two weeks in England fell in the hours around sunrise, and meant that we couldn’t start our ride super-early, but it cleared out on-schedule.

From our fairly-central AirBNB it didn’t take too long until we were onto the cycle paths along the River Exe (which widens into the Exe Estuary), though it was still a bit tough navigating out of town and staying on the correct path. There were a whole lot of cyclists riding north into Exeter with dual Ortlieb rear panniers, reminding Rett of Villa O’Higgins as a “place with people who aren’t bike tourers riding touring bikes”, but I think they were just commuters taking advantage of the path to come longer-than-normal distances, and thus needing to haul more stuff in and out of the city with them (and keep it dry).

For miles 2 through 12, the trail settled down, emptying of other users and confusing branches, and the flat waterside pedaling was the easiest we’ve had in England. And it brought some of the new perspectives I was hoping for, though “elegant old architecture” remains omnipresent.

Unfortunately after 12 miles, the coast became too lumpy to allow the bike trail to continue (the Southwest Coastal Path for hiking does continue), and we were dumped onto an A-road. This is something I had been worrying about for the last 24 hours, when I finally checked the details of the route I had chosen based on the amount of “heat” on the RideWithGPS heatmap. Yeah, a lot of cyclists apparently go this way, but I’ve learned that in this country (and at this peak travel time), that doesn’t necessarily equate to comfortable cycling for us.

At first it wasn’t quite as terrible as I expected, but it certainly wasn’t great either. By the time Rett peeled off onto a sidewalk at the bottom of a hill in Teignmouth (to let the line of cars by who had been piling up behind us), she was hating it so much that I wanted to stop at the train station and see if we could use that to move us forward. But Rett didn’t want to “give up” (duh, no such thing), and worried that figuring out/waiting for a train might wreck our schedule, so onward we pressed.

But, we could only ride a short bit further until we ran into backed-up traffic, so we ended up walking the bikes several blocks through Teignmouth anyway. At the bridge over the River Teign, it seemed like more of the traffic branched off to continue upriver rather than crossing over with us, so we were able to begin riding again on the bridge sidewalk. And then I made an on-the-fly decision to take us partway up the hill on backroads rather than the A-road I’d mapped. When we rejoined the A-road, traffic was surprisingly chill again, so I don’t know if my amended route was any better, because it still hit 12% grades, but at least it let us see a bit of of the village of Shaldon that we wouldn’t have seen if on the main road.

The broad rains that swept out in the morning were now followed by a swarm of small but intense cells, and one soon scored a direct hit on us. However, proof of the light A-road traffic was that it didn’t feel scary to be suddenly dumped on, though the amount of water using the roadway as its easy path down the hill was slightly alarming! And getting wet was just another challenge to the day that we didn’t really need, especially in a moment when things were starting to feel a bit better.

Some of our stress was due to our desire to visit the Babbacombe Model Village mid-ride, a rare diversion for us that would take hours out of our day. Upon arriving to the parking lot, I ran over to the nearby store to buy us lunch (the £4.50 “Meal Deals” that every grocery store offers, where you pick a sandwich, side, and drink). We sat in our chairs, but halfway through another cell got us, even worse than the last one. We were able to run under a tree and stay relatively-dry until it passed in less than 10 minutes, but our chairs were holding pools of water in them when we got back to the bikes.

Thankfully that was the last blast, and we were able to fully enjoy our visit to the Model Village. Rett’s interest was the driver, but as a guy who had a big HO-scale train layout, and who often feels like a giant looking down at aerial maps, it was right up my alley too. The ~1/12th scale is much larger than the 1:76 of HO trains though, which gives it the ability to actually cause some genuine disorientation when a giant-sized human crosses into your vision and breaks the illusion that the detail has tricked your brain into believing.

After a couple hours of miniature-world reprieve, we then had to return to the real full-sized world of riding our bikes down busy roads with full-sized cars. We got through the rest of Torquay by spiraling down the town’s big central hill, so that wasn’t too bad, but then hit absolute insanity at the bottom. We were essentially in a Jersey Shore environment: carnival rides, beachgoers everywhere, and massive lines of cars, either just trying to get through town, or trying to find a place to park at the beach. For a bit we could cut through parking lots, going faster than the cars paralleling us on the road, but eventually we just got stuck with them. We alternated between walking and riding, sidewalks/maybe-bike-paths and in the road, and one of those transitions is when the bad day got even worse.

We were slowly riding on the sidewalk/path in a generally-pedestrian-free area, but there was a family of beachgoers trudging up the hill ahead of us, carrying their beach gear. They were all spread out like oblivious cattle, but they probably have more right to the space then us, so no problem, we’ll just hop off and walk the bikes past them. Rett half-sprints to get ahead of them, but they continue their zombie shuffle, seemingly without sensing our presence at all, so Rett rushes to get riding again before they get too close for her to start. In throwing her leg over the bike, the combination of rushing and exhaustion means her foot doesn’t go quite high enough, and she smashes the inner protruding bone of her ankle on a steel rivet of her unyielding saddle, simultaneously bruising and cutting the skin. Oof, two new types of pain now piled on top of everything else.

We press onward, with Rett now heavily limping whenever we have to walk, but hope lives in an alternate B-road that we can turn down soon. Except, when we get there, a “Road Closed” sign. Fuck. I quickly flag down a driver exiting from that road, and she’s happy to help, and is confident that we can get through to Brixham. Except we really need to get to an outer part of Brixham that probably isn’t “Brixham” as she’s thinking of it, so we’re still stuck with the unknown. Rett is on her last leg, and there are no other drivers coming to ask, so she fatalistically decides to keep pushing up the sidewalk of the still-bumper-to-bumper A-road, assuming it’s the less-risky choice.

And then the sidewalk ends. Fuck, again! The stream of traffic was literally non-stop in both directions of the narrow shoulderless road, so there was no way to get back into it even if we wanted to. At this point, we were both ready to give up, but didn’t even know how to do that. There were some auto repair shops nearby, maybe ask if someone has a truck they can drive us in? Call an Uber somehow? While I was looking behind us to see if there was any solution that way, it might have been Rett saying “fuck it” that caused me to turn around and see that she had decided to just stick her bike into the road somehow. Ok, I guess we’re doing this! I quickly hopped aboard (luckily no ankles bashed in the rush this time) and took off after her and…it was totally the right decision?

Essentially we had reached the top of the hill, so the rest of the way to our turn-off was downhill and we were able to go pretty fast with no drivers taking obvious issue with us. Finally free of traffic, we had less than a mile to go to our AirBNB, but the streets were still narrow and hilly, so Rett still had to push her bike, limping, for the final stretch.

Our AirBNB was essentially a copy of our previous one, since the indoor/outdoor backyard-accessory-dwelling worked so nicely for us. It was smaller, with no real kitchen, and the bathroom was a few steps further (and unfortunately for Rett, some of those steps were up and down), but still a good fit. And thankfully our host was able to provide an ice pack to apply to Rett’s throbbing ankle. I ran out a few blocks to get cold fizzy drinks (from a neighborhood store that the friendly old man seems to run more for conversation than to make money), and I cooked up a ravioli dinner on our stove on our little patio while Rett worked her best on decompressing.

I’d been a bit worried that we hadn’t yet plotted out a destination for tomorrow night, but after today’s riding, I was glad for the flexibility to adjust tomorrow in response to today.