Hills, hills, hills

Day 12:

Bude to Bodmin – 38 miles

Planned mileage: 38 miles

Actual mileage: 41.2 miles (mostly going down to Tintagel Castle)

Cycling time: 3hrs 20½ mins (although that includes some pushing up steep hills for Jen!)

Average speed: 12.3mph (see comments about steep hills...)

Maximum speed: 31.8 mph (mostly too twisty and/or bumpy to safely go faster)

Route: http://gb.mapometer.com/en/cycling/route_1398253.html

Accomodation: Stephen Gelly Farm, Bodmin - stephengellyfarm.farming.officelive.com/Accommodation.aspx

The hills in Cornwall are steep. I mean, really steep.

We left Bude in bright hot sunshine after an excellent breakfast and a nice chat with our fellow guests. Our trip from Edinburgh has certainly kick-started quite a few conversations, most of which start:

“So where have you come from?”

“We've cycled down from Edinburgh.”

“Oh I see, you're doing it for charity!”

“No, it's just our summer holiday”

“Oh...”

30% - must try harder!

So off we set down the coast and soon started hitting the hills. Not like yesterday's Devon hills, which were quite hard work, but real Cornish ones, which start long and steep and soon become longer and steeper. Then oh, how we congratulated ourselves at our good planning when we met a 30% (that's nearly 1 in 3) downwards gradient. That's steep enough that the cars which were driving up it could barely get going when they met each other. We smirked at their misfortune. Then we reached the next inlet and the smiles rapidly vanished when we saw the signs warning of a 30% upward climb.

Now, I unfortunately have a bit of a personal vendetta against hills, which basically is that I can not allow myself to be beaten by them – the last time I failed at cycling up a hill was on Kintyre in 1986, after which I vowed to buy a new bicycle. Jenny is much more sensible and walked up it after she stalled on the corner with the 30% gradient. The hill just about finished me off, and it went on and on too, so by the time we eventually reached the top I had to rest for a good 10 minutes and get an instant glucose boost by eating our ancient Kendal Mint Cake bar that we've carried with us (surprisingly, or perhaps not, it tasted exceedingly good).

A few miles further on, I noticed that our route took us down to Crackington Haven, which looked as if it involved another such cliff face to ascend. I also noticed that there was an alternative route along nice B and A roads and which still took us to Boscastle, a village we wanted to see. It didn't take much persuading for Jenny to agree to this, and so we upped our average speed and saved both legs and my pride, as I really don't think I could have coped with another hill like the one we had recently climbed.

Boscastle is the village parts of which were swept away in August 2004, but they have done an excellent job rebuilding it so at a casual glance you would imagine that it had remained untouched for centuries, especially on a sunny & hot day like today. It was very busy with tourists, but we found a very pleasant cafe and enjoyed our coffee & cakes sitting on its terrace next to the main road.

We were dreading the road out of Boscastle as it climbed away up out of the village, however in practice it was a cinch by comparison to what we had already done, and even though we followed the coastline to Tintagel the worst of the hills was behind us. Phew!

Tintagel was very busy which gave it quite a buzzing atmosphere but we carried on through the village and straight down the steep path to the castle ticket office. The castle itself is quite spread out, covering the mainland and a small peninsula, and was built on the reputed site of King Arthur's birthplace. It was also massively busy – in fact we were warned to avoid the main path in to it as we would have to queue. As it is run by English Heritage and we get free access with our Historic Scotland membership, we decided just to abandon seeing the castle itself and had a picnic lunch in what was one of the outer courtyards on the mainland bit of it.

More tea please, no hills

Lunch over, we carried on, heading inland through Camelford, almost entirely on B roads and despite quite a few long climbs and a freshening headwind – it had also clouded over somewhat – we made very good progress. Approaching Bodmin around 4, we branched off onto some small roads and found our remote, organic farmhouse bed & breakfast, without too much trouble. Our host kindly brought us tea and home made flapjacks in the (now sunny again) conservatory, before we had much-needed showers in our spacious, comfortable and well-appointed room, overlooking flowers, fields and trees.

We headed into Bodmin on foot, a walk of about 2 miles, and found a very welcoming pub, The Mason's Arms, where we had an excellent meal (sirloin steak, chips & nice veg) and a selection of guest real ales. On the walk home we experienced the first real precipitation of our holiday – very light drizzle, which now (10pm) has turned to proper rain. Let's hope it's dry again by tomorrow!