Dartmoor, Exmoor & Quantocks Bikepacking Day 2 – The longest day

This was always going to be a hard day, and planning wasn’t wrong.
So hard that we’ve reached somewhere to camp at 10pm having started out at 7 this morning. And straight to sleep.Having now had chance to get some sleep, it’s seems like time to recap on on the day. And what a day it was. A very very long day.

It’s was day of highs and lows, quite literally. 6000ft of climbing sounds like a lot, but I hadn’t fully understood how much it was. We did a lot of climbing and mainly off-road up crazy steep climbs for the first 20 miles. This meant we took a long time to complete the first third of the distance. It took us 7 hours for this, meaning at that pace it’d take us 21 hours to complete the day. This meant that morale was low, although helped slightly as we cycled through some beautiful places. We came through forests, stream crossings, across moorland, found surprising beautiful rivers. It’s was a very picturesque route
Our late lunch stop was a lovely village called Chagford. Trying to find something to eat seemed complicated. The local shop closed at 2pm for a day, for probably the first time in years, as we got there at 5 minutes past. Thankfully we found a great little cafe (The Birdcage), and some amazing handmade pizzas. It seemed like the best pizza we’ve eaten for years.

I think the cycling gods were on our side after lunch and we had a few miles on road to catch up our 60 mile target. We still had a lot of climbing, and things kept getting so steep we were walking on ever more portions. This wasn’t slowing us down as the hills we could cycle were at little more than walking pace.

We began to make some good time as the off-roading bits also became quicker. We made it to Chulmleigh by about 8. And only having 5 miles to our planned night stop we decided to enjoy a good meal at the local pub. And again the meal was possibly the best food we’d eaten in ages (although I think at that time of night any food would have tasted good).
With a short final 5 miles, how hard could it be. Being Devon, very. Yet again we had a quick downhill and a long slog up the other side. The camp couldn’t come soon enough.