The day began with a disappointment…the Mayor of Tiverton stood us up…never mind, we had our photograph taken anyway.

Setting off North along the A38, we encountered a nice big hill, but it wasn’t long before the troubles began…one mile in, Neil had a total bike failure, bending his frame and breaking his rear derailleur clean off.  Needless to say he was a little annoyed, but the track spare came into action after an hour of tinkering time (and delays) in Taunton.  Still gave us some time to catch up on eating some more snacks to keep us topped up with energy.  Whilst waiting…we heard a random loud bang…a car backfiring?…a bank job?…nope, it was James’ inner tube exploding…when nobody was near or on the bike!  Easily fixed…just more time taken from a really long (over 80 miles) day.

Setting off again, we fought our way through the busy centre of Taunton, heading for Glastonbury and beyond, to our lunch spot in Wells.  Pushing on, we counted down the miles, and the welcome terrain of roads without too many hills.  Feasting in Tesco’s car park at the late time of 2:30pm, we hurried to get pedalling yet again.

Being a day of two halves, the flat terrain disappeared and the long steep hills returned to hamper our progress.  We ploughed on, riding towards the known hills of Bath and a memorable and rapid descent into the busy centre…scary!!!  Leaving the centre of Bath was difficult as it was 5:30pm and rush hour…still, gave an opportunity to take a bit of the historical city in.

Freestyling our final part of the route, we needed to use some unclassified roads to get from Bath to our hotel on the M4 near Chippenham.  Making a wrong turn somewhere, we had a surprisingly pleasant meander through some rolling hills on some very rough roads, with a final ascent to meet up with the road we had originally planned to take.  As enjoyable as this part of the ride was…yes a steep hill was very enjoyable (can we go back to Penzance…not)…it ate up precious daylight hours and we were under pressure to get back before dark.

Finding the main road always helps, and it being flat helped us clock off a few miles again.  Oh no…Lucy got a puncture a typical occurance when so close to our hotel.  With a slow change completed, time was getting on for 7:30pm and the sun was setting.  Still we pushed on through the recurring hills and all but a broken spoke for Matt (no time to stop, that can be repaired in the morning), we rode on getting to our evenings location at 8:05pm…just as it got dark.

An evening of Service station food and sleep to come, before Day 4 begins, and a ride to Thame.