What a day! We left our Youth Hostel, at 9 and we had our first promise of some empty roads. We had some beautiful views with a little traffic to start, but after we had our mid morning tea at Hawkesfield, the roads started to clear. We found ourselves several small side roads that were completely devoid of anything but pavement and hedges… (we even lost the road lines!). We even started rotating through our leaders as we got more and more comfortable with our bikes. On this empty road, in the middle of nowhere, we spotted The Poltimore Arms…

 

This could not have been more of a hole in the wall place. Steve (or John, depending on who you are) ran this real small pub, with 2 other locals that probably hang out there every day (Chocolate George was no longer with the group). And we did hear some crazy stories while we shared an Exmore Ale! We asked if he had food, and he had a huge laugh! But we made friends and he ended up giving 2 meat pie’s he had been given from his mate in the morning.  4 Pints and 2 meat pies (from his own selection) for only 15 quid. We also got a long history lesson, with the pub built originally in 1283, and where my Dad sat by the wood fire, a Parliamentarian was stabbed to death! So many stories and A MUST SEE. I don’t think you could actually get to it without stumbling onto it though…

With a “Bugger Off” from John (or Steve), we headed onwards and continued on some amazing roads, on our way to Pontypool via Bristol. When we got to Bristol, we did hit some traffic, and my bike especially kept rising in temperature because we were hardly moving. We pulled off to have the bikes cool for a few minutes, but then Paul couldn’t get his bike started. We figured out that his alarm wires had melted in the heat, and shut the entire bike down. It was late enough that the bike store we found in Bristol had already closed, so we had it towed to the gate in front, and then chained it up, took out the valuables, ate some fish and chips, and Paul jumped onto Mike’s bike, and we finished the last our to the Premier Inn in Pontypool. We arrived just after 10 pm, dropped our bags, and polished off a few pints before hitting the sac.

We had some good clips today, take a look!

Here WAS tomorrow’s plan… we’ll see where we actually end up.