Saturday 18 June 2011

Day 5, Fownhope to Market Drayton

We headed away from the beautiful 15th century Bark Cottage B&B at around 09:20 with the promise of heavy showers all day. It was to be the longest day at 80 miles so we cracked up the pace, helped by a wonderful tail wind. The roads were generally great and the Herefordshire and Shropshire countryside beautiful. The picture shows Joe with a Wenlock Edge backdrop. A welcome coffee stop in Leominster was just what we needed at 19 miles and I bought an insurance pork pie (n.b. Steve!) which was to be a life saver later! We planned for a lunch stop around 13:00 but were so rural that no shops or pubs were on the route. We found one ex-pub that had turned into a snotty, pretentious restaurant that said they'd stopped serving food as soon as we stuck our rain-soaked heads round the door, so we pulled over into the next farm entrance and, using the farmer's wheely-bin as a dining table, divvied up the pork pie. It was fabulous!

Much Wenlock was the next treat as we found a coffee shop still serving the day's special of a big bowl of spag bol at 15:00. Fully fuelled, we sailed up the Wrekin hill by Telford and beasted the last 20 miles to Market Drayton arriving about 18:20.

We ended up at the overflow accommodation (Hermitage Cottage) for the B&B we'd booked which was a huge treat as it was lovely. We spent a pleasant evening with the hosts after sharing a beer and a Chinese take-away and retired to bed replete.

Lesson of the day : don't ride an extra 1.5 miles of trunk road to save 3 miles of detour to Ironbridge without checking that the road you want to turn off onto isn't 30m above you on a fly-over; doh!

Stats: 80.3 miles at 11.2 mph avg; 7hrs 9mins in the saddle; 1225m ascent. Only 2 light and brief showers!

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