Today started ...badly.

At 4am I was woken up by horrendous rain & storms and as I lay huddled in bed I prayed for it to all magically disappear before we had to hit the road. And it didn't.

I knew we had another long day ahead and the thought of doing it in the dark and rain for the first time was pretty scary. Over breakfast our main conversation was how we were going to manage it but we agreed we wouldn't give up and would plough on. Anyway the only other option involved many miles of cycling backwards to a train station so we might as well go onwards.

We set off early, and even though I wore my poncho, we were soon soaked.

The rain made it tough going but by the time we stopped for a lovely vegan lunch in Bridgewater (with some worryingly luminous apple tea) we'd done 20 miles and the rain had stopped.

The afternoon was better with some lovely canal paths and only a little drizzly rain (I kept my poncho on just in case the heavens opened at any second) but as we approached our destination for the evening the cycle path took us across the slip-road for the M5 which was absolutely terrifying but we survived and it was worth it to stay in a hotel with a swimming-pool and hot tub which we spent hours in to ease our cold, aching bodies.