Day 3 - Moretonhampstead to Glastonbury with Matt Tamea

Day 3 began earlier than the previous days as I needed to get to Exeter by 9am to meet a work colleague, Matt Tamea from Wood for Trees, who had offered to join me for the day’s ride.  We had an early breakfast at the White Hart Inn and I then started the steep climb out of Moretonhampstead in the Dartmoor fog just after 8am.  With fresh legs, the climb was quickly done and I started a great descent on the way to Exeter.  On smooth tarmac I was able to keep up with the few cars and the GPS rather comically estimated that I was going to reach Glastonbury by 11.30am!  Fortunately, I knew more about the hills to come and didn’t believe it.  At one point on a big climb I was counting the number of standing-up full-power pedal pushes to reach the top (it was 365) when I was passed by a convey of 6 huge tractors each pulling an equally big trailer full of freshly harvested crops.  I was glad they were not on my side of the road.

Don't trust these two to navigate!

I met Matt at Exeter St David station at 9.15am having successfully navigated from Exeter St Thomas station which happened to be on the route.  After repositioning the front mudguard which had started rubbing again, we retraced my path back to the main route and began the climb out of the city centre.  After a brief diversion through a housing estate we had to concentrate on navigation to get back on track.  However, leaving Exeter we were chatting about the Scottish Referendum and the implications for Westminster when we accidentally missed the route again.  Unfortunately, this time we made a further wrong turn and ended up re-joining the route but inadvertently heading back into Exeter!  We realised something had gone wrong when Matt recognised some of the buildings and I noticed the distance to our destination was increasing on the GPS!  Durrhhh!  You might imagine two intelligent men equipped with smartphones and a GPS would be able to work out which way to turn but it was two workmen on a step ladder who really pointed us in the right direction!  By the time we finished our diversion we had done 8 miles but were only about 2 miles from where we started - oops!.  Fortunately, second time round we found the right route and learned the lesson that you need to navigate as well as chat!

Out of the city we cycled on quiet country lanes heading broadly for Taunton.  It was great to have a riding partner and the miles slipped by easily.  However, the climb up onto the Blackdown hills was one of the steepest so far and I had to pause three times for quick breathers before continuing the climb.  Matt was very patient and waited for me at each stage.  Quote of the day: “Who decided to do this on a single speed?  Oh yes, it was me!”.

We had a great pub lunch at The Kings Inn and met Branston the Golden Retriever who can apparently open his own bag of Pork Scratchings!  He only gets one bag per day so we didn’t see him in action.  By the time we left, we were cold from sitting outside on the patio and were glad to reach the first climb to warm up again.  A steep climb in leafy woodland did the job and we were soon bowling along on flatter roads.  Matt was generously waited for me on hills and cycled ahead of me whenever traffic meant we needed to ride single file.

Mulchelney Abbey may never have seen so much Lycra!

Having made good progress we decided to take the “Muchelney Detour”.  Muchelney is recently famous as the village that became an island during last summer’s floods, but is also the historic site of the second biggest abbey in Somerset after Glastonbury.  We chatted at length with the English Heritage site manager and enjoyed learning about the abbey before finally setting out for Glastonbury.

The frame guard extracted

We had one last adventure when Matt’s chain jumped off.  The frame guard had got caught between the chain, the frame and the chain ring and it took some effort to pull the chain clear again.  Fortunately, the frame was not damaged and we completed the final couple of climbs to reach Glastonbury at 5.45pm and find Fiona who had already arrived at the Premier Inn after a day visiting The National Trust’s Castle Drogo (currently wrapped in Europe’s largest free-standing scaffold!).

Matt and his wife Emma kindly invited us for dinner and we enjoyed great lasagne and crumble while telling stories of the day’s adventures.  Matt demonstrated an interesting way of opening a rather explosive bottle of fizz that involved most of it ending on the table rather than in glasses, but it was a very relaxed enjoyable evening.  Emma is an expert at feeding LEJOG cyclists having hosted other groups in the past.  Thanks Matt and Emma – it was great!

It total we completed 83.9 miles in 9 ¾ hours elapsed and 6¼ hours moving at an average of 13.4mph and a maximum speed of 41.3mph.