In a move designed to get the fireman to choke on his breakfast we found the main door downstairs locked and barred from the other side so were restricted to the one emergency fire exit to get outside to our bikes. While getting some practise putting our gear on our bikes the owner came out to watch/chuckle/look hung over before wondering off and producing a fair fried breakfast for a broken kitchen. The start of today was up Bodmin moor and judging by our average pace up it certainly was. With a snack stop on top we had only managed 20 or so miles but had gained plenty of height. While others may berate the A30 for it's functional design I'd say that it certainly wasn't the worst road we encountered. Being a dual carridgeway did encourage faster than average driving but it did give us a strip of tarmac inside the white line to use as a bike lane. Also having two lanes encouraged cars to pull over when they approached, a couple of times even when there was a car in the outside lane which produced some eyebrow raising moments.
Having sailed down the other side of Bodmin moor with the wind filling our sails we approached Oakhampton, which to my mind looked good for a lunch stop. Duncan 'Sterner stuff' Nicholas and Hugh 'Hunger is just weakness leaving the stomach' Williamson had other ideas however. A meagre nibble later and we were back on the punishment machines and making ground. In fact we made it to Crediton before pulling up. By this point we had ventured into 'Dippy' Devon. For those who haven't been there imagine a small boy yo-yoing furiously, then plot the height of the yo yo on a graph against time. You have a rough profile of our route. The county with hills that just keep on giving but on the down side we had several candidates for 'whose eyes are on the biggest stalks'.
Being a Sunday we seemed to be struggling to find any coffee shops for lunch in Crediton so resorted to scratching together what food we could from the newsagent, not ideal but passable. When paying I asked if there were any public toilets open, he almost lost his sale when he told us that our best bet was Waitrose round the corner. Still we did appropriate damage to the food we had and set off to face the hills once again. The run onto Tiverton thankfully followed the river, easing the gradients as we snuck out of Devon and into Somerset.
Eventually we rolled up to Duncan's parents house in West Buckland, just shy of Taunton. Glad to get our first full day in the bag we quickly stripped the bikes of gear and started on the first cuppa, shortly followed by showers all round. This was finished off by a very well received huge meal by the end of which eye lids were getting heavy after the previous nights 'good nights sleep' and days exertions. Still we were determind to see a bit of the village so we borrow some of Duncan's mothers rain coats and headed out into the light rain for a guided tour. Duncan showed us the school, the old forge, the place to toboggan, the bit round the back of the church for BBQ's and smoking and all his favourite haunts. Heading to bed early we were warned that Duncan's brother would be coming in late but franky unless he set up an 11 piece drum set and used my head for the symbol there was little chance he would have much luck keeping us up.