The Jalalabad revenge

Leominster to Acton Bridge (Cheshire)

Well, the Jalalabad turned out to be a seriously reckless move. The plumbing of Highgate House may never recover and we were all a little more circumspect than usual over the quantities of breakfast we ate this morning.

After some WD40ing - mainly to try to stop the squeaking mice that have been a feature of my riding over the last few days, we said our farewells to Angela and Michael, who were preparing to hand over the baton of chief baggage transporters  to Albert and Rosemary. It's been fantastic to have their cheerful support over the last few days. Thank you very much for keeping us going with cream teas and pints of beer at appropriate moments!

We headed off in cloud, through the last of Herefordshire into the rolling Shropshire Hills. We all feel we're getting to see bits of the UK we really didn't know before, and have been adding lovely old houses to our shortlist of fantasy places to live, as well as building up our list of potential weekend break destinations. Both Ludlow and Much Wenlock went on the list. We met some local bikers at an excellent cafe in the centre of Much Wenlock - which is apparently what gave the Olympic mascot Wenlock its name. Who knew?

By now the sun was out, and we headed up another lovely valley, with the Severn winding along below us, looking rather more modest than it had done under the Severn Bridge 24 hours ago.

Observations from the roads:
There are a LOT of tractors around. Where do they all go when it isn't harvest time?
There are some delightfully courteous drivers, and some complete idiots, who take ridiculous risks just to get home 5 minutes earlier. Bristol and Cheshire win the prizes for having the prime idiots so far.
(Not a road observation, but still).... Sudocrem is amazing for saddle soreness. Soreness of all sorts is setting in in a big way.

Lunch no 2 took a very long time to materialise, and there was a sens of humour failure when we got lost and bypassed our planned stop. By the time we got to Nantwich we had been going for 55 miles without a break, and resorted to Cafe Nero, which was a bit of a comedown after all the great cafes we've visited, but was a LOT better than nothing.

On through the busy rush hour roads of Cheshire, and we finally found Ash House Farm in Acton Bridge  just before we hit 100 miles, in time for a badly needed dinner  with Albert and Rosemary and another good sleep.

Route: Leominster, Ludlow, Aston Munslow, Much Wenlock, Market Drayton, Church Minshull, Weaverton, Acton Bridge.

Whoops  - forgot the stats: miles - 100, Calories - 4510, Metres climbed - 1398