Today started off fine, but by the time I had had breakfast it looked like it was going to be a wet one. I got dressed up in full wets, including overshoes (and socks! But checking the shoes first! I had brought midge spray and mosquito coils for the north, nobody said I’d need slug pellets in the south west!), and set off for Taunton on the A38. A pretty good road, with painted cycle lanes every so often. As I entered Taunton, I spotted an a ASDA which was well timed for a toilet break, and as I noticed a seat in the cafe with a plug, so an extended coffee stop was taken to restore my badly depleted power levels. It would be better just to charge but, I spent the time writing the blog. Two large coffees and a terrible toasty later I was ready to go. The sun had been and gone, but the main threat of rain was over. I got completely lost on the Taunton/River Tone cycleway and managed to do about a 2 mile loop accidentally – I’ll have to look at the map to see how it happened. One of the “features” of my old bike is the bell has a compass in the top of it, it’s not brilliant because of all the metal in the bike, but it’s good enough to head south on!

I escaped Taunton in the NCN3 route, which was superb, it felt like it was going in a fairly direct route, not too many hills, very picturesque and included the Grand Western Canal and a disused railway to get into Tiverton. It felt like an easy 25 miles.

I actually met a guy walking his dog, who is custodian of the cycleway signs for this stretch, they were good and unusually I made no navigation errors! I got into Tiverton for a very late lunch, but was still on the look for power, so I ended up in a Costa, with a double socket and a double handled swimming pool of coffee.

My initial target was a campsite near Tiverton, but I thought I could push this further – in Costa I came up with a plan to head for Highampton, and an excellent sounding campsite – Hole Station Campsite where each pitch has a fire pit and a hammock. Once I’d left Tiverton it was clear this plan was completely unrealistic as I hit the hills. So steep, crawl up, then Crawl down with the brakes squeeling.

On the map the hill out of Tiverton was called Long Drag Hill, it did I live up to its name. You know the term, ‘it came off the back of a lorry” well if you want a portaloo, I know where you can find one.

I made it to Witheridge, where I stopped for some refreshment, and a plan to head for a site near a shop about 5 miles away. Unfortunately, I left the town on the wrong road, and only having paper maps (the phone battery had gone again), I didn’t realise for quite a few miles as I was heading northwest to South Moulton.

Anyway every cloud had a silver lining, and I ended up at 10 Acres Vineyard campsite, the owner was shutting the vineyard shop as I arrived, so perfect timing. I hadn’t bought food, but had my emergency rations but no drink. On the off chance I asked if she had a half bottle of wine, she didn’t but instead had a tremendous selection of local bottled beer – now what’s the chance of that! They had two sockets for charging stuff, a rather splendid composting toilet and a nice quiet basic site between the vines. Probably the nicest site so far, with one other couple on the whole site. It would struggle to cope with big numbers so hopefully they don’t let it become overcrowded.