Day 4 - Wigan

So, I lie here listening to Brian snoring in bed on the other side of the room, trying to stay awake long enough to update 4 days worth of cycling using a laptop which keeps crashing and seemingly the only internet connection available between here and Land's End. Forgive me if this ends up being brief...

Today we did 95 miles. 95 flat miles with the wind blowing either directly towards us or across us (which is worse because it drags you into the path of oncoming traffic or into the hedge). We took the A49 all day long. This was our route.

An incredibly dull day of cycling to be honest. Hard slog. The notable things to happen were me to get a puncture whilst the others were about a mile ahead, luckily having stopped for lunch. Me being the prepared soul I am had no puncture repair stuff, so had to walk along the hard shoulder for a mile, before trying to cross the road to get to them. This cost us an hour over lunch (which was a massive Burger King in case you're wondering). But, the best was yet to come... having stopped for a drink and food later on and remarking that we'd done well to make up the lost time, we immediately noticed Paul had a puncture, which took 3 efforts, 1 1/2 hours and a fortunate call to our support crew to sort out. The picture above is just before we noticed the puncture. Look how happy we are. Look at the hope in our eyes. Plonkers.

Our "easy" day still took up 10 hours of our time....

After our customary pint, starter, main and side for a dinner. We all traipsed off to bed, weary, but we're getting through it...