Day 259: Stone to Callow Hill

Sunny August Bank Holiday

It was a lovely day to be cycling through the English countryside, even if skirting around Wolverhampton doesn’t sound like the greatest route. In fact, it was a lovely day, through quaint villages, along canal towpaths and on a few rail trails that kept the time on roads with Bank Holiday traffic to a minimum.

There were some hefty climbs

We crossed the Severn Valley Railway and waited long enough to see two trains pass in the station

Our pitch for the night, in a pretty basic field, but none the less pleasant

The biggest drawback of a sunny Bank Holiday is that lots of other people our out enjoying themselves, and we had quite a job finding a campsite to stay at. Once we had tents up, we also had some difficulty finding someone to sell us dinner. The pub down the road was all booked out and the one the other way wasn’t serving food. In the end I managed to find a place a couple of miles away who told me they serve us if we were there by 6:15 — and the current time was 6:00. Time to race back to the campsite, grab our bikes and race over to The Plough in Far Forest (great names here!) We made it and managed to get a good feed to fuel our cycling tomorrow.

Fingers crossed everything goes ok tomorrow. We’re starting to have a lot of trouble with the lowest gear on the Blue Strawberry (our tandem) and we’ve had to stop using it altogether. It’s a hilly route tomorrow as we head through the Black Country to Sarina’s sister Natalie, near Ross-on-Wye. We may be walking up a few hills.