Day 13. Street to Okehampton. 75 miles

A wise man once said to me (and has repeated it in a comment in this blog) "When the going gets tough, pull up your knickers and keep on boxing". Today it was a mantra that we needed to live by as we entered Devon - home of the up and down hills. We left Street and had an easy first 20 miles or so, stopping for breakfast at a nice little bakery at Othery. We then cycled through Taunton - a busy little place - and headed out on the main A38, deviating from the route suggested by the Book of Love. When will we learn that we ignore the Book at our peril? The road was stupidly busy full of stupid holiday makers who were about as discourteous to cyclists as they could be. We all got pretty hacked off with this and were making slow progress, so we decided to get back on the quiet but hilly route suggested by the Book of Love. Every End to End guide or blog you read says that Devon and Cornwall is the hardest point of the journey and the hills were certainly steep. But we are now veterans of Kirkstone Pass, so getting up these little speedbumps presents a much smaller challenge. I have to say that this is another advantage of doing this in the North to South direction - one's legs are fitter to tackle the hilly terrain of the Southwest. The route skirted conveniently around Exeter to Crediton, where I had to stop at a bike shop to get yet another spoke fixed which had popped 10 miles earlier. Gandhi's charmed journey had finally ended with a puncture at about the same time, so Darrin and I pressed on to Crediton and met him there once he'd fixed it. We then headed on to Okehampton, our stop for the night, and were presented with some monster hills to end our day with. Question - why are Youth Hostels always at the top of a bloody hill?