Day 8 - Crickdale to Bristol

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An early start to the day had us heading off our planned course to something that has been on Jeff's Bucket List (since yesterday) - going to the river head of the River Thames just out of Kemble. Crickdale is fairly close to Kemble so we head out that way to start the day. The last 500m is on grass and dirt (ugh!). The river head itself is an ancient wall with water holes at the bottom (photo not included). To think this is the source of the mighty river that flows through London is amazing.

From Kemble we turned south west to the city of Bristol. This will be our launching place for Bath tomorrow which is only about 20kms away. We have seen a number of "road kill" on the roads but the site of the hump backed black silk lying on the road (photo not included) did surprise us. These creatures are normally nocturnal and get home for a happy ending.

We also passed the Kemble Airfiled (photo not included). It's an airport where they scrap/salvage planes. There was a coffee van there (photo not included) so we stopped for a coffee. The guys inside were Turkish and have restaurants and accommodation in Istanbul. Jeff has all the details.

We rode through some lovely small lanes again. No traffic and lots of fields rolling up and down around us. Unfortunately (for me), the day came with numerous stretches of dirt again. Most stretches were actually not too bad but the odd stretch was horrible. To make matters worse one of the screws in my right cleat fell out meaning I couldn't twist my shoe out of the bindings on the pedal. I had to remove my foot from the shoe at the end of the day to get off the bike.

It rained a fair bit today. Not so bad that we had to stop but wet enough. In fact bad enough for my phone to not want to charge because it says it's wet inside (why the photos are not included). If anyone has any tips on how to dry it out let me know. No pictures from phone until it's fixed. This meant Jeff did the last 15kms of navigation to our stop for the night at the Holiday Inn. It also means he'll have to do all of the navigation until I sort my phone. I'm worried, very worried.

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