Day 12 - Shepton Mallett to Oakehampton

A nice and relatively easy ride today which got me to the campsite by about 3pm. Plenty of flat roads from Shepton Mallett so that I could keep the speed up and the sun was out so things were good.

Managed to get a bit lost in Exeter though due to the bizarre one-way systems in the city centre but nothing major and I was soon spat out the other side for the final 14 miles to the campsite.

As soon as i left the city the roads instantly shot up to gradients routinely in excess of 15% (and frequently a lot more) and for what felt like a huge amount of time and hence altitude gain. I was effectively cutting across the north east corner of dartmoor and it was certainly making it's presence known. Once at altitude it generally stayed pretty high although all changes (either up or down) were incredibly steep. I came across a couple of local cycling club members and racers so I spent much of the last 7-8 miles chatting with them as the steep hills went by. A bit of peer pressure not to show myself up and a good distraction in terms of the conversation made those miles fly by. Good guys.

For tomorrow it's the killer leg that I've not been looking forward to for sometime. It's the most amount of climbing of any leg and if today's late hills are anything to go by it's going to be a long hard day. At least that will only leave a nice relaxing 60miler to finish off on Saturday. Roll on tomorrow night!

For the next two legs I'm joined by my friend Andy who has driven down today. Will be good to have company on the road again. It feels like a long time ago that Ross left to head home from Glasgow. A lot of miles have definitely been ridden since then.

More tomorrow

Goodnight all!

Rich



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Location:Edge of dartmoor