Oh. My. God.
What are we doing?
We have just spent an afternoon from Hell crawling up the steepest hills in Cornwall. At one point I was genuinely worried that Brian was dead. And already Guy Newall is known collectively as “the bastard Guy”.
The morning was an absolute cakewalk. A great breakfast provided by our host, Steve, and we were off on our way. A lazy ride down to Land’s End. Smile and laugh with the other intrepid bikers down there, agree to meet them on the way, flirt with the old ladies, have our photos taken. Easy. Rattle along until lunch and we covered 45 miles in 3 hours. Halfway there, easy. Easy.
Hence looking like this -
We took lunch at a caravan on the side of the motorway and the lady was most accommodating and found our challenge highly amusing. Until she found out the route we were taking to Tavistock and her face changed and she told us a) it’s another 60 miles (this one we later found was true) and b) there’s quite a big hill just over the horizon (this was 100% fact). Still, we looked like this -
The afternoon was, without doubt, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t quite find the words to explain it at present, that’ll have to wait until a time when we have more evening energy. If you go to the route and click on the player, then look at the elevations (and laugh at the corresponding speeds), you get a tiny idea of what it was like. These weren't hills, they were mountains. We needed Sherpas. We had no chance. Unsurprisingly, we spent a lot of the time looking like this (I didn't take a photo when I thought Bri was dying, just in case, so this'll have to do) -
Thankfully, we stayed with the nicest people in the world, Pete and Margaret. I doubt anything could have lifted our spirits after that afternoon, but somehow they did so. God bless them.
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