A Ride of Two Halves, from Barnstaple to Bristol

Day one

It's 4:30am. I know it's been raining, heavily in fact; this based purely on the fact that I was rudely awaken about an hour ago to a monsoon clattering down on the skylights in my room. I don't think I could be any less enthused about what I'm about to do this weekend.

The kitchen is a state, and thank god my wife isn't about this weekend because this is not acceptable behaviour! I'd been up just a little bit late getting ready last night. The Orange ST4 I've selected for this adventure is leaning against the washing machine - it looks particularly dorky with its seatpost mounted rack and complement of crud catchers. There's an assortment of food, kit and tools everywhere, dried mud litters the floor. And I've got to be at the train station in less than an hour - a 15km ride no less - so clearing this up will have to wait.

we kill time by mocking each other's contrasting levels of preparedness and packing...

Somehow I'm actually early; I see the ticket barriers are wide open so I find the platform, trusting Matt to remember the tickets and arrive on time. He turns up minutes later and we await the train. We kill time by mocking each other's contrasting levels of preparedness and packing - I've packed for a fortnight and he's packed for a trail centre day visit.

Our itinerary was a train to Barnstaple from Bristol, changing at Exeter along the way. We'd ride out from Barnstaple, across Exmoor to Wootton Courtenay, where we would then stay at the very lovely and bike friendly Dunkery Beacon Hotel. Being someway short of the halfway mark, we'd then have a long second day's riding taking in the the Quantocks, the Somerset Levels and the Mendips, before heading back to Bristol - 160km all in with 3000m of climbing over two days, no sweat!

Barnstaple to Bristol

With a fair few miles to cover on Sustrans route 3 to get out of Barnstaple, we peeled out of the station and were on our way. Sustrans Route 3 briefly goes onto an old railway line, which through neglect, almost felt a bit singletracky. At the end was a fairly ropey looking stair descent. Matt went first, quickly discovering they were those ill-spaced, wood-lipped and oft-eroded type of steps that just feel completely wrong to ride down. I saw his front wheel start to cross up and braced myself for his surely collar-bone-breaking-stack that was about to occur. But he somehow saved it, meaning I had to follow. No sweat I figured - I can ride anything Matt can ride - until I felt the stuffsack on my rack push back against my arse the second I tried to get back off the saddle. I just about got down but made a mental note of my inability to get off back of the bike by even the smallest amount. After negotiating various housing estates and minor roads, we were offroad at last and heading into Exmoor.

Barnstaple to Bristol

We were pretty much expecting this to be a little dull and a bit easy. Our plan was to hit the B&B by 2pm, dump the rack, camera and heavy backpacks, before treating ourselves to a much lighter play in the woods that surround Wootten Courtenay. Putting the miles in, we were shifting along quite nicely and on schedule.

Barnstaple to Bristol

Not much further into the ride, things got a little less 'fun'. First there was the 30 minute long, but probably less than half a kilometre hike-a-bike up an infeasibly steep, rocky yet muddy, and barely walkable natural drain. This was preceded by slogging through ankle-deep mud soup. We put this behind us and carried on.

After navigating a particularly subtle bridleway, we eventually crossed the series of fields that marked our desired right of way. Our reward for navigating it successfully was a particularly sketchy looking singletrack descent on the otherside of the gate. A grassy, wet and very cut up sheep track, we slipped and slid our way down - disc brakes honking in protest - it was over in a second and proved to be a very rare treat.

Barnstaple to Bristol

Our brief descent had landed us right down in a very steep valley and our route was straight out the otherside. And so began yet another of the many long hike-a-bikes. Our 'bridleway' up out of the valley would have been difficult enough to walk up without a bike and with sturdy climbing boots on. Doing so with a racked-up full suss bike, a 20lb rucksuck and studded MTB boots was not a whole lot of fun.

Barnstaple to Bristol

This pretty much went on all afternoon, road sections leading us to yet another hike-a-bike. We started to laugh about how maybe this was some disgruntled local's idea of a joke to try and put people off riding in Exmoor. But the worst really was still to come.

We learned two things about Exmoor: it's very wet, and it has some very big marshland areas. We plotted our route on 1:50,000 maps and it didn't show us that our route was going to cross these vast marshes, something a 1:25,000 would have done. From about 2pm we embarked upon a pretty substantial 10km stretch with no idea what was coming.

ride 10 metres, push and wade 10 metres...

What a slog! 10km of the least fun you can have on a bike. Ride 10 metres, push and wade 10 metres. Honest to god it was like crossing the Dead Marshes trying to get to Mordor! We were losing light, we could see the mother of all weather systems moving in behind; we really had lost all sense of progress, scale and distance. By the end it was just marshy grasses up to saddle height with ankle deep mud and water. We hit a road at 5pm nothing short of exhausted having only covered 30km all day. Thankfully it looked like the impending rain-mageddon was going to miss us but we had to be at the B&B by 6:30pm (otherwise our hosts would be out until 11pm). We made a call to abandon the route and hit the roads.

Barnstaple to Bristol

We set the GPS units to auto route us to Wootton Courtenay and powered on convinced we could make it. With no real grasp of where we were, we had no idea of the impossibility of reaching the B&B in time. We arrived at the B&B at 7:30pm, a full hour late. As we expected, our hosts were out, and we were cold and tired with nowhere to go. After a very long ride to the next village, we found a pub and hid from the cold.

We eventually returned to the B&B to check in at 11pm, Beccy who runs the place was a proper mother-hen to us and I'm amazed we were even allowed to stay given the state we were in! The Dunkery Beacon Hotel is far too lovely to be 'mountain bike friendly' but I wasn't going to argue with actually being allowed in!

Day two

We woke to the mother of all breakfasts, Matt did his usual party trick of putting away more food than humanly possible. We piled the food down knowing full well we'd need every calorie we could get our hands on.

Barnstaple to Bristol

We had a very long day ahead of us. We had to get the hell out of Exmoor before a long road ride to get to the Quantocks. After a brutal climb up a mucky forest road, we were quickly up on the hills overlooking Wootton Courtenay. What a start to the day! We were treated to a 5km fast and flowy descent all the way into Dunster, and boy did we make the most of it!

With spirits high we cracked on with the road ride to West Quantoxhead. We were flying, our legs couldn't even feel yesterdays brutal slog, we were smiling and we couldn't wait to hit the Quantocks! Such was our relative pace, we were over the Quantocks within the hour and absolutely hammering along - even chasing down and passing packs of riders!

Barnstaple to Bristol

Today couldn't be any more different from yesterday - this is what we had in mind when we signed up for this. Bridgwater came and went, and before long we were on the Somerset levels and we could see the Mendips off in the distance. We were going to be back before dark at this rate!

But the Somerset Levels are a big place. Being so flat there was no let up in pedaling, and our mornings tail wind was now a buffeting cross wind. Our pace got slower, the Mendips didn't seem to be getting any closer and the wind just got stronger. The levels, like Exmoor, are also a very wet place to ride.

As we honed in on Cheddar, and with the Mendips finally looming up in front of us, I started to blow up energy-wise. Matt was starting to drop me at an alarming rate, my blood sugar was low and I was starting to worry about simply making it back.

Barnstaple to Bristol

We stopped at the bottom of the Mendips and piled the cakes in. I was grumpy and I very much wanted to go into Cheddar and get a cuppa; Matt wisely pointed out that it was already past 5pm and we had to cross the Mendips before dark. So grumbling, we pressed on.

it was equally crap once on top too, only now it was dark...

It had been far too easy today, and as is the way, our route took in the worst possible way up the Mendips - another bloody long hike-a-bike! So steep, muddy and slippery was one section that if it wasn't for me having studs in my riding boots and being able to drag both bikes to the top, we'd have never actually got the bikes up and would have had to turn around and find another way up!

It was equally crap once on top too, only now it was dark - proper dark! Wading in more swampy turf we eventually crested the Mendips and the trail turned down. Riding by the light of a Hope Vision 1 Led on its lowest setting to conserve the already depleted batteries, we tip-toed down the surprisingly dry descent and rolled out the otherside.

Once again we decided to abandon the route and set the GPS to simply get us home by road. It was a long old slog along the A38 back into Bristol, big long climbs with traffic passing too fast and too close for my shattered nerves to cope with.

I eventually split from Matt and rocked up at home at 9:30pm. We'd ridden (and trudged) 215km over the two days, a 12 hour ride followed by a 10 hour ride - much further than planned. I was severely broken but I couldn't help smile to myself as I pulled up at my garage and the reality of the last two days hit me.

God that was a good ride!