After the meal with Tricia and Alan I got really good night's sleep and the route to Church Stretton for lunch was really straight forward and the GPS picked it straight up. Unfortunately I forgot to switch the tracking on so the first 15miles or so went unrecorded.
The Old Cow Shed where I was staying was difficult to find (but again my GPS had taken me straight there the night before) and it took a few phone calls before my next co-rider, Adrian and his wife, found it.
So it was about 8:30 before we were on our way. The two of us met up with Andy who was waiting in Bromyard itself. Poor Andy had to wait a while - sorry Andy. So now we were three. A very pleasant ride along the Welsh border to Church Stretton for lunch.
Here we were guests of the Mayfair Community Centre. This is an amazing centre teaming with voluntary activity. Jackie Mantel who is in charge of the IT activities and ruralnet|uk's contact for the net:gain programme. There was a photo call after lunch for the local press.
Here my work colleague, Simon Marshall, joined us and Andy had to leave for the return trip to Bromyard and his car. So we were still three!
The afternoon started well but included the very busy A49. As we had had an alcohol-free lunch our kidney bells started ringing at around 3pm and just as they did we spotted a sign to the Albright Hussey Manor Hotel (open to non-residents), an unexpected oasis off the hell that is the A49.
There we stopped for an hour or so to soak up the sun and Guiness and banter. In retrospect we stayed a bit too long! We didn't get to 'Ash Hall' outside Whitchurch until 7:30pm and getting a evening meal provided less than straight forward. We were helped by some very generously-minded people and this is documented here.
We said goodbye to Simon at Whitchurch Station where he loaded his bike into his car and was off.
I went back to the station at about 11:30pm, after our meal, to meet my son Luke off the train. He was to join us for the next 250 miles. So we were three again!
Download log file (text format): S06D04.log
Download track file (Magellan MapSend format):
S06D04.trk
Only stage today
Distance (miles): 74.63
Saddle time (hh:mm:ss): 5:34:09
Average speed (mph): 13.40
Max speed (mph): 33.3
Cumulative distance (miles): 396.40
Notes:
Click on the images above to see them full size.
For details of how vertical profiles were derived from log files and the structure of the log files see this posting.
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