Simons Lands End to John O'Groats Challenge.: Day 2

Okehampton to Tiverton (36 miles) - The day began with a fair bit of rain (again) so this once again delayed my start time. Eventually got off around 9:45, by this time the sun had come out for me so at least bad weather was one less thing to contend with.

The morning's ride was going OK but was quite hard-going with more hills to deal with, I was feeling pretty knackered so decided to make today an easier one (especially after yesterday's 107 mile day of hills, hills and more hills!) so we changed our checkpoint from Taunton to Tiverton - thankfully when I called Rach to let her know my plans I managed to catch her before she'd hit Taunton as she'd just stopped for another £95 fuelling of the van!

I arrived in Tiverton around 12:30 but Rach was nowhere to be seen. I called to find out if she was close but the panicked voice on the other end of the phone said otherwise...she had come off at the junction that the sat nav told her to and had been waiting in a layby until I called with a progress report, unfortunately, when she started on her journey again the ever-helpful sat nav took her a bit of an ass about face way to get back to the main road so this was to be her first encounter of 'country lanes'

After a quick chat with a 'local' she managed to find her way to Tiverton and eventually turned up around 1:15pm. We stopped for lunch and Rach picked up some supplies for the next few days, I then thought it must be about time I was heading off on my afternoon's ride so left just after 2pm

Day 2 continued...Tiverton to Bawdrip (nr Bridgewater, 36 miles) - the afternoon went well, very well infact, I was feeling good and seemed to have found my stride. Met up with another cyclist en-route who was also doing LEJOG which was brilliant and a nice way to break the journey - we chatted and rode together for about a mile and I found out it was his Day 3 - he was pretty astounded I had got as far as I had in just 2 days - we reached a hill and he said "guess you'll be going now then...". (he was an older chap and think he'd quickly worked out I could perhaps 'go' when I needed to!) so I put my foot down and off I went leaving him at the bottom of said hill.

We arrived at the campsite just after 5pm, I felt I could have gone on a bit further today, but sometimes we need to put the 'sensible head' on and remember there is still a long old way to go so should preserve some energy and rest-up.