37.0 mi / 9.1 mph / 2083 ft. climbing
Home: Paula’s AirBNB

The Kiwi we met in Bath had a lot of good things to say about the route west along the Bristol Channel, up and over Exmoor National Park. But he didn’t bring any “loaded touring cyclist” knowledge with his recommendations. Upon closer examination, there would just be too many steep hills along that route to make it enjoyable for us. So instead we decided to head south toward some other markers Rett had put on our Google Map. That had us heading for Exeter, a place in my mind synonymous with “fancy British boarding school”, but in fact that’s Exeter in New Hampshire, USA; no such poshness exists in England’s Exeter!

Outside the campground bathroom I had a nice chat with a white-haired gentleman whose English accent was so thick I needed to ask him to repeat his initial question: “are you riding Land’s End to John o’ Groats?” (“John o’ Groats” not being a word-combination my brain expected to hear didn’t help!) He had done that traditional “coast-to-coast” ride of Great Britain, as well as rides in continental Europe, and was convinced that we would find the latter more-enjoyable (which is commonly just anti-parochialism, everyone thinking their own country is the worst, but hopefully true in this case).

For today my idea to minimize pressure we feel from drivers was to climb a big hill. Instead of following the motorway-filled corridor from Taunton to Exeter, we’d cross the more-remote Blackdown Hills, one of the areas that’s painted green on Google Maps, a sort-of sub-National Park formerly known as an “Area of Outstanding Beauty”, but recently rebranded to “National Landscape” after they finally admitted the awkwardness of the original name and acronym (AONB?)

The 900-foot climb was mostly-rideable for Rett, with the light traffic making it easier for her to keep pushing in the spots where the grade tipped up to 9%. “Blackdown Hills“, with its plural ending, is actually a bit of a misnomer. It really seems to just be a single big hill, with a surprisingly-flat top (and that’s part of why I chose those route). The 10 miles across the plateau (before we dropped 900 feet off the other end) were some of the flattest riding we’ve done in England. Very strange for such a large uplifted area to be smooth on top, but that’s not a complaint!

When we were taking a snack break on the side of the road, a couple of road cyclists went by (and waved hello, a rarity, because roadies here keep themselves separate from our kind, just like they do the world over!) A much-more-casual father and son then came riding by in the other direction, and I overheard the son ask “why did that car honk at them?”, and the father explained that it was because they roadies were riding two abreast rather than single-file (as they were doing, and we always do). Thank you for the dense addition to my knowledge of this county’s road-culture: #1) honking here is rare enough for a 12-year-old to ask his father about it, and #2) as patient (and non-honky) as British drivers are with cyclists, riding two abreast is still frowned upon.

We had packed lunches with us, but then Rett faced a challenging decision: push on for a few more miles in order to reach a store with cold drinks, or re-up our energy stores with nothing but water to wash down our sandwiches? But then, a sign advertising a “Community Shop” in Talaton, the village we were about to pass through. This seemed unlikely to help us, because most of the small rural villages we’ve passed through, charming as they may be, have had a complete absence of commercial activity (in contrast to a place like Peru). But no, this village was a rare one where a small shop was still open and selling just what we needed (admittedly, it felt a bit more like a labor of love than an obvious economic winner, as the title “Community Shop” implies as well).

The B-road leading us toward Exeter was the busiest of the day (anything called “London Road” this far from London should probably be taken as a bit of a warning), but still nothing too bad. And then our entry into Exeter was probably the best city-entry/exit we’ve had since leaving Southampton, a straight (if quite uphill) shot alternating between bike-only paths and minor streets, with pretty decent (though still far from perfect!) transitions between them.

Our AirBNB was a special place, in a line of dense row-houses on a busy street near the center of the city. But the houses have narrow but extremely-long back yards, and our hosts built a garden oasis at the far end of their yard, so it almost felt like we were staying in a more-remote hideaway than the actual rural farm that our last AirBNB was at. It was also built as a seamless merging between indoor and outdoor spaces (something that works perfectly for us with our bikes), and thus along with all the greenery, reminded me very much of places where we stayed in Hawaii, which is likely not often used as a comparison point with England!

We had to walk out of our bedroom/living room area to get to the bathroom and 3-sided open-air kitchen area three steps across the deck, but those were actually features that “forced” us to enjoy the continuing nice weather (some brief light drizzle on our second morning was literally the first rain we’ve had in two full weeks in England!) Our host had quite the stable of bikes, a common interest that Rett intuitively leveraged to ask about laundry. Though not in their listing, he was happy to let us into their house to use the machine. One of England’s higher-end grocery stores (Waitrose) was just a block away, making everything so comfortable and easy that we quickly added a 3rd night onto our initial 2-night booking. One day we walked to High Street for some errands (and randomly stumbled into some top-flight bike-aware routing advice from the owner of the shop where Rett bought some jojoba oil), but otherwise we just relaxed and recuperated, enjoying salmon on the grill (yay indoor/outdoor kitchen!) for two of our dinners.