Miles today = 195
Miles so far = 2255
Countries visited = 7
Where are we? - Llandudno
For some reason, unfathomable to us, Wales has become the “destination” of this trip now. Never mind the Pyrenees, the Alps, Switzerland or the Black Forest, it is to Wales we will go, with our best Welsh accents likely to get us beaten upon just about every bar or cafe we enter.
And so we find ourselves in Llandudno, which last saw its heyday in about 1950. We are in the shittiest hotel of the trip, the sort of place you have to climb over the toilet to get in the shower, which then either scalds you or freezes your nadgers off. A mattress that was last changed when Llandudno was fashionable, ie the 1950s, and a proprietor whose knowledge of modern booking systems roughly equates to my knowledge of astrophysics. How the hell this place got 8.4 on booking.com is beyond me! Me thinks foul play! Shades of the Ranch Motel in California - no, nothing is that bad!
Anyway, Llandudno it is, a town where a brass band still plays on the sea front each evening, and evangelists are drumming up trade with their version of fire and brimstone. Yep, we have entered a time machine and gone back, not an hour or so, but a few decades.
By 9pm, Llandudno is shut. Having just plotted our rough route for tomorrow and by this time ravenous, we search initially in vain for a place to eat, mostly rebuffed with a curt “no” to the inquiry: “Are you still serving food?”. But a chain of pizza/pasta restaurants comes to our rescue just as we are about to think it was Wetherspoons, KFC or nothing!
All this of course is after yet another fantastic day on the bikes. A stop at Foulness Osprey Sanctuary on the way out of Cumbria got me major brownie points with Eric - and there were chicks hatched in the nest - about 3/4 of a mile away but beggars can't be choosers!
Then a Brief Encounter with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson at Carnforth Station, had Rob in raptures. (And we got his wing mirror fixed again, with tools from the Heritage centre - ah, the kindness of strangers, you just never know do you).
A brief stop in Southport for the obligatory selfie on one of the country's most interesting piers.
Then, the piece to resistance, the installation “Another Place” by Antony Gormley on Crosby Beach, just north of Liverpool, on a beautiful atmospheric day.
Finally, our usual discovery that we are only half way to our destination at about 4pm, and a mad dash through the Birkenhead Tunnel , down the Wirral peninsula and into Wales! We can see the mountains of Snowdonia, and they beckon us tomorrow…
Some more (mostly silly) pictures below!
