Day 3: Sept 16, 22:55: Well, that was an interesting day!! Finally set off at about 09:30-ish, and almost immediately didn't know which way to go. 'Turn right' out of the Travelodge was a purely speculative move, which by a fluke happened to be correct, so we were on our way to Taunton.

Weather-wise our luck held, as it was a bright, dry and sunny morning, albeit with a bit of a headwind. All that was very nice, but didn't help when we hit a near-vertical climb within about half a mile of starting. It felt almost vertical, anyway. Truthfully it was probably little more than a speed table, but it bloody hurt.

We did find our legs again though (after only 3 or 4 hours) and continued through the lumpy bits of Devon and Somerset at a pretty decent lick. Then we stopped for a bit of a snack break just north of Bridgwater, crammed a load of pork pies and cocktail sausages down our necks and then it started going wrong.

Something happened to our pace. Our next stop was just south of Bristol and it seemed to take ages to get there; partially this was down to a seemingly never-ending, steep and badly worn-out stretch of road south of Bristol Airport. Anyhoo, we got to our lunch stop in a particularly glamorous lay-by at around 15:40, and left again at 16:30. Already we were beginning to suspect that the remaining 55 miles to Newent would be tricky to achieve at a sensible time, but we plugged on and managed to hit Bristol in the middle of rush-hour

This is fine normally, as (being on a bike) one can usually weave around traffic. However, when there's 5 of you trying not to get separated and traffic lights keep changing when only one of you has crossed the line, meaning the other 4 have to stop, it gets a bit frustrating. Actually, I was thoroughly stressed about it, a fact not lost on Mark who took the opportunity to wind me up further (the git)

Still, we survived Bristol and continued up the A38 towards Gloucester, but eventually had to stop about 2 miles south because it got dark and we were a bit scared (except Carl, who whinged and bitched immensely at the time about stopping but later agreed that we were right and he was just as chicken as the rest of us)

Once again, there's no stats because the rides are taking longer than our phone batteries last, but we reckon it was around 86 miles - would've been nice to do the 100 but we just ran out of time, light and balls.

Besides, with the promise of a nice meal and a shower at Mr & Mrs Jonathan Miles' gaff for the night, motivation to continue waned with alarming rapidity (we will make it up tomorrow). Many thanks to Jon & Viv for putting up (and putting up with) a bunch of sweaty smelly cyclists & their poor, overworked support team (who also deserve massive thanks and recognition) and providing much more than we could've asked for and, quite possibly, deserved

Keith