A brief review of the first week

One week in and the days have already blurred into each other. It's a strange feeling where one feels like one has been going for ages, but at the same time it has been going past very quickly.

Other than the first day there have been no mechanical incidents of note and the weather has been pretty kind to us.

We have had 3 hard days in terms of hills - the first two through Cornwall which we expected and the one up to Ironbridge which we probably weren't, although we are just taking each mile as it comes.  A lot of the rest of the terrain has been pretty flat.  Curiously our average speed on the flat bits isn't all that much higher than on the hills.

We have done fairly well at sticking to the back roads where we have seen very few cars - the penalty sometimes but not always being a bit more up and down.

Accommodation has perhaps been harder to find than expected.  We haven't failed yet, but day 3 was a struggle as we pushed on in the wet and it got later and later - at least it was fairly flat.

Today we head for Langholm and the day after we should get a night in our own beds.  The forecast for Sunday isn't great but if anyone wants to join us we expect to be in Innerleithen around midday.  We will take the B709 from Langholm to Innerleithen and the same B709 towards Edinburgh.