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Reunited in Reading, Jeff was exhausted by the time he got back with his passport. It was a late dinner (Afghan Restaurant) and then turn in for the night.
when on his own yesterday, Jeff worked out he could navigate using the MapMe App without a WiFi signal and so today Jeff would be leading and doing the navigating. We left the Abbey Motel at 8:30am, destination Oxford, some 55kms away.
The route via MapMe took us onto an overgrown dirt track just outside Reading, which was a little damp. We had only gone about 80 meters where our path was blocked by a fallen tree with no getting past. Some ladies walking in the opposite direction advised we could push out through the bushes into an adjoining golf course and ride past the obstruction and then cut back onto the track - which is what we decided to do. We rode 3 holes before we found a gate back onto our track. Quite a nice course and I'm sure the tyre indentations in the green won't take too long to be repaired.
As it turned out, the quite country lanes were mixed with a lot of dirt
tracks. Some of them quite boggy, not my favourite surface at the best of times. Jeff on the other hand was having a ball. The dirt tracks (did I mention they were boggy?) slowed us (mainly me) down considerably. We had anticipated we would get to Oxford at about 1pm, but it was blowing out considerably. There was also a number of conversations with locals along the way and one even had a connection to someone Jeff knew.
As it got later, and I tired of the dirt tracks (spat the dummy), we switched to Google Mapping of our route and from here we stuck to the bitumen. Our pace picked up considerably and we got into Oxford at about 3:30pm. First stop was a bike shop. Our tyres had deflated a bit and we were running on between 25 and 30 psi when we should have been on 50 with the weight we were carrying, this had made the going even tougher on the dirt (boggy!!!) tracks. Jeff was also looking for a kick stand as his had broken on Day 1. He finally found one at the second shop we visited.
Then there was accommodation to
sort out. We tried to find something central. The first place we visited looked like it should be condemned. But it didn't matter because the front door was locked and noone answered the door bell or phone message I tried to leave. From the look of the exterior I think we dodged a bullet. We eventually found a motel at a considerably higher rate than preffered, but at this stage we had no other options. The hotel room itself is quite small, which I can live with, but they didn't have a twin room available so we're sharing the bed tonight.
Oxford is a beautiful town. So many historic builds with the University. And with all the students in town, bikes (and buses filled with tourists) rule the rode.
We had Malaysian for dinner, which for me means Fried Keow Tow and for Jeff it was, quote, some chicken thing with rice, unquote. After eating, we looked at our course in light of losing a day yesterday. We've decided to cut out Bristol and the Cottswolds and get to Bath via Clicklade. This keeps the days around 55km and we pick up the lost day. Accommodation
is all sorted too, which takes the pressure off when we arrive. Distance today was just over 50kms.
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Tot: 0.117s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0925s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Mike1234
Michael Carra
Golf course?
Hi Peddlers, tyre imprints on the greens, hey! I hope at least some of them lead to the hole. Missing the Cotswolds Big mistake. Safe travels. All good at home. Mike