Paul and Siona's travels

• DAY 5: Thursday 7th October 2021 – Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire to Nailsworth, Gloucestershire
• Distance: 60km
• Elevation gain: 350m
• Accomodation: Egypt Mills Hotel

We started the day retracing the last couple of km on a main road (uphill this time!) before rejoining NCN45 southwards along some quiet country lanes through small villages. Approaching the bigger town of Gloucester, the route became a very pleasant cycleway through fields alongside the River Severn, nicely avoiding the busier roads, before joining a good towpath along the Gloucester and Sharpness canal. Before we knew it, we had left the city behind and were back in quiet countryside – NCN you did a good job on this one! After more pleasant country lanes, we stopped for coffee at The Stables Cafe, sitting on an upstairs deck in lovely sunshine watching people and barges go by on the canal – it really was like the middle of summer in October! We had to wait a while at the Sandfield Swing Bridge while a boat went through but were soon on our way. The route soon passed under the M5 and joined the A419 and became much more bitty like all too many cycle routes in the UK with cycle paths a few hundred metres long continually switching from one side of the road to the other or even disappearing entirely. We were making such slow progress that we eventually gave up and just cycled on the busy road. The day ended much better as we joined the Stonehouse to Nailsworth traffic free “rail trail” for a lovely few km that dropped us right behind our hotel for the night. We walked into town and had a couple of beers at the Britannia pub in a nice sunny beer garden (the bar at our hotel looked a bit upmarket for our budget!). Returning home with dinner from Tesco, we decided that perhaps we had misjudged the Egypt Mills Hotel, so had a couple of beers in their lovely beer garden as well!

• DAY 6: Friday 8th October 2021 – Nailsworth, Gloucestershire to Wroughton, Wiltshire
• Distance: 53km
• Elevation gain: 570m
• Accomodation: The White Hart Pub

The day started with a big uphill section that seemed to stretch on forever, out of the valley up to Minchinhampton which seemed to us to sit on a small mountaintop, but in reality is just a couple of hundred metres above sea level in the gentle Cotswold hills. Here the route levelled out and was more gently undulating as we headed east through more small Cotswold villages on quiet country lanes. We deviated slightly from NCN 45, taking the direct road from Kemble to South Cerney, skipping out the town of Cirencester. I’m sure that Cirencester is a lovely place, but the thought of an extra 5km or so and a busy town centre to negotiate was not particularly appealing. After South Cerney, the landscape became flat and we followed quiet paths, which were a bit too narrow and muddy for comfortable cycling on loaded touring bikes, between several big lakes. We passed the small town of Cricklade and soon reached the northern outskirts of the much bigger town of Swindon. Our target for tonight was the small village of Wroughton, just to the south of Swindon and the route skirted the town nicely on a mixture of cycle paths and quiet roads, so we passed through Swindon without really seeing it at all – in all fairness to Swindon, the name doesn’t really conjure up the image of a “must see” tourist destination, so we can live with that! We arrived at yet another lovely country pub, with a nice beer garden on a sunny afternoon, so the temptation to have a few beers was too much to resist. After so long away from the UK, there really is nothing nicer than a British pub beer garden on a sunny afternoon, even if it is October!

• DAY 7: Saturday 9th October 2021 – Wroughton, Wiltshire to Amesbury, Wiltshire
• Distance: 62km
• Elevation gain: 680m
• Accomodation: Arobus Hotel

Cycling out of Wroughton, we had a long uphill on the B4005 than a minor road to rejoin NCN45 on “the ridgeway” which the map promised to be a very pleasant traffic free route, avoiding the busy A4361 to Avebury. It started out well enough with a narrow surfaced road that gradually became a bit rougher and unsurfaced but was still pleasant cycling, on a glorious sunny day with lovely views across the valley below. It then deteriorated into a rutted grass track that was the worst surface that we have ever cycled (OK, pushed!) a bike along. It would have been tough to hike without a decent pair of walking boots, let alone cycle. We saw guys on mountain bikes pushing instead of riding. The words that we used to describe the NCN route planner responsible for this really shouldn’t be written down, but seriously – how is this part of a long distance cycle route? We finally struggled into Avebury a couple of hours later, which is a beautiful village, but slightly traumatised and well behind schedule didn’t really have the time to do the place justice. Back on tarmac at last, we picked up the pace on some lovely but hilly roads on another glorious sunny day. Passing over Salisbury Plain there were some wonderful views and signs warning about tanks crossing from the nearby MOD areas – although we didn’t actually see any! After all the uphill, we had a lovely downhill towards tonight’s target of Amesbury. We decided (incorrectly in retrospect) to follow the horribly narrow and busy A345 into town instead of the hillier official route running parallel (I think that we just wanted to get there!) to get to our hotel for the night. The receptionist informed us that we were the only guests staying that night that weren’t part of a wedding party in the hotel (never good!) but assured us that it would be finished by 11pm. We decided that a few beers at The New Inn just up the road were in order to reward ourselves after a tough day before going back to the hotel where the wedding party finished at 2am, slightly behind the promised schedule, and we finally got some much needed sleep – a tough day all round!

• DAY 8: Sunday 10th October 2021 – Amesbury, Wiltshire to Southampton, Hampshire
• Distance: 60km
• Elevation gain: 450m
• Accomodation: Languard House B &B

We started the day with a nice quiet country lane along the River Avon followed by a good cyclepath into Salisbury, reaching the official end of NCN45 at Salisbury Cathedral. We were early on a Sunday morning, so everywhere was quiet and we had a long break on a seat overlooking the beautiful cathedral and grounds. We left Salisbury on another National Cycle Network route, NCN 24, which mostly followed quiet country lanes through lovely countryside and picturesque villages on what quickly became another fine sunny afternoon. Upon reaching the village of North Baddesley we had to leave the cycle route behind and head into the suberb of Shirley in the west of Southampton where we had an appointment the following morning to get a Covid test for our upcoming ferry to Spain. Shirley certainly didn’t warrant the description “picturesque” and in all fairness to the place, we wouldn’t be here unless we had to be. Our accomodation tonight was described as a “bed and breakfast” but with no breakfast. In fact there was nobody there to cook the breakfast or do anything else – just a lock box on the door and email instructions on how to get the key out and get into the room – more Covid related nonsense I suspect. Another sunny afternoon meant it would be rude not to take a trip to the beer garden at the nearby Pig ‘N Whistle for a couple of beers in the sunshine – we better hope the weather changes soon for the sake of our budget and our livers! This was not a pretty village pub by any means, but it was friendly enough – most of the locals were Polish and there seems to be a huge Eastern European population in this particular part of Southampton. Later, we got dinner at the Shirley Fish Bar and made our way back to our “Bed without breakfast” for the night.

• DAY 9: Monday 11th October 2021 – Southampton, Hampshire to Portsmouth, Hampshire
• Distance: 40km
• Elevation gain: 170m
• Accomodation: Portsmouth Budget Hotels

Today started with a trip to Shirley High Street to get our Covid tests done at one of the many businesses that seem to have popped up overnight for the purpose. To say that the “nurses” running the place and taking the samples weren’t the most dedicated healthcare professionals that we had ever come across would be an understatement – they didn’t seem to really know what they were doing and certainly didn’t look like they wanted to be there. On the plus side, even if we had Covid the sample was taken so badly that the test would probably still come back negative and not stop us getting our ferry! We were later convinced that this place was where our credit card details were cloned (it was the only place south of Chester that we used the card, and the fraudulent transactions that later appeared were all in and around Southampton, so strong circumstantial evidence I think. If I’m being mean, I could also say that £200 of the transactions were on makeup and the woman on the desk looked like she put the stuff on with a trowel, but maybe I’m being unfair!). Anyway, back to the cycling. We had to negotiate busy roads out of Southampton before joining NCN2 and a long bridge over the wide River Itchen estuary. There was then some lovely cycling along the coast on quiet roads and cycle paths to Hamble-le-Rice. Here we took the tiniest ferry that we have ever seen across the River Hamble to Warsash. More quiet lanes and cycle paths took us to Lee-on-Solent where we had chips for lunch sat overlooking the sea from a little kiosk on the sea front. It was then a short ride to Gosport where we took a bigger ferry for a short crossing of Portsmouth Harbour into Portsmouth. We did some laundry then had an early night in Portsmouth’s smallest (but cheapest) hotel room ready for our early ferry crossing tomorrow morning.

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