Why me?
Troubled waters
Now we were four
Having breakfasted like kings, Andy, DA and I toiled up the climb out of Shobrooke to take the A3072 towards Tiverton. Assured by DA, who is familiar with the road, that it is quiet and scenic, we followed it instead of minor roads as far as Bickleigh.
Scenic, yes; quiet, fairly; unfortunately for three heavily-laden cycle tourists, it is also monumentally hilly with superb descents into (or climbs out of) Bickleigh from both directions. At the foot of our descent, DA maintained his quaint custom of pinch-flatting while with us, this time by hitting a pothole while following a car hard on the brakes. Luckily the rim was undamaged.
At Bickleigh the road crosses the foaming river Exe via a fine-looking bridge of five arches wide enough for one way motor traffic only. The bridge is believed locally to have inspired the Simon and Garfunkel hit “Bridge Over Troubled Water”; in any case, it was built in 1809 to replace a previous bridge damaged by flood water.
The climb away from Bickleigh on back lanes was steep and gloriously remote, with barely a single motor vehicle disturbing our progress as far as Cullompton. Here, I in turn punctured, or rather had a repetition of a flat I thought I’d repaired five miles previously. It turned out to be a bubble blown through the tube at the site of a tiny nick in the sidewall of my rear Vittoria Open Corsa CX Evo 25c tyre. I replaced the tyre with my spare.
Leaving Cullompton, we pushed on a bit on flat roads along the gentle Culm valley as far as Hemyock, where the steep southern face of the Blackdown Hills awaited. The top out at Clayhidon was pretty much the end of our climbing for the day and, with our meeting with the fourth member of the tour party arranged for Pitminster, we rode straight past the Half Moon despite its obvious charms.
The Queen’s Arms at Pitminster turned out to be shut, so we carried on for a mile or so to the White Hart at Corfe. Here I called Simon, who was on his way from Taunton station to meet us and was, judging by his breathless answer, pretty keen to down a pint or two.
He was also riding very light. “Charlie”, his 1981 Roberts tourer, was wearing a brand new Carradice saddle bag containing suspiciously little by way of luggage. Since we were more or less done climbing for the day, excepting the Polden Hills, we let him off and departed the White Hart for the Somerset levels, arriving in Wells with enough time for a look at the cathedral before we sought our evening’s accommodation.
