New shoes for the bike

Another eventful day amongst the wolfpack! We had planned for this day, being our shortest in distance to be our quickest especially as we were meeting friends at our B&B for the night. How wrong we were. Mechanical issues once again slowed us.

We started out by heading in to Bath which we found to be a lot hillier than we'd anticipated it to be and our speed varied from very quick at 30mph down the hills to almost above a crawl climbing out of the city. We worked hard to get out of what seemed a man made basin and eventually were back on some quieter 'B' roads towards Glastonbury. The weather didn't seem to want to cooperate and we found ourselves back in the rain. Mind you it's to be expected wherever we are in the Uk! 

We sailed through Glasto, unfortunately there weren't any hippies or Michael Eavis to welcome us. We were then on what we thought to be the home straight with a swift 20 miles into Taunton. We were riding as a tight 3 again and Ed was our lead out, mainly to keep Dave and I entertained watching his Benny Hill style legs, although I was starting to regret mocking this as I was feeling my own legs do much the same sporadically for no apparent reason. We stopped off for some lunch about 8 miles from Taunton,  where once again we overfueled. As we hopped back on our bikes my legs seemed to be working very hard but my wheels weren't turning at all. Big problem! After some attempted diagnosis from Mike and the mechanics I found if I could get the wheel turning once and keep pedalling without stopping I may make Taunton which was by now 9 miles away. This seemed like an easy task so I set off hard. I knew that unless the city was again at the bottom of a very steep hill if I stopped my momentum I would not make it and the thought of being picked up and rescued was not in my mindset so I felt the burn and managed to locate a cycle shop where I've managed to get talked into a whole wheel upgrade which, "is the best thing to help your riding and will give you free time on the bike". Clearly I had mug on my forehead. So £120 and 40 minutes later I was able to set off again and chase down the now 2 man wolfpack where no doubt I'll get abused my Cookey and comforted by McNally. Tomorrow I'll be even quicker though.