Day 3 - Axbridge to Eardisland 05/06/12

A long slog in the rain. In fact the word slog is starting to take a rather new meaning. A fairly steep climb out of Cheddar was followed by A-roads with cars and lorries zooming past at breakneck speed and then GPS problems in Bristol ( I had a feeling there would be - for some reason Garmin, although fantastic in some respects, insists on causing problems in places where you could really do without it - and always on a pissy day!). We kept it together through some of our most stressful moments so far, which I'm pleased about. You've got to be good friends for this sort of lark, I now realize, and you've got to know each others' strengths and weaknesses otherwise there would be arguments all over the place.
The Severn Bridge (when we finally got to it) was a bit of a treat - I'd been looking forward to it because Philip Gross's poetry collection "The Water Table" is all about the Severn Estuary and its shifting, sliding flats and you could really see them as we rode over this huge great structure... wonderful stuff.
Wales and Herefordshire are, I'm sure, lovely but we couldn't see them because of mist and rain so all I will really have as memories of them are some hillbitchmothers like the 25%-er up to Arthur's Seat right at the end of the day. I'm not ashamed to say that I didn't even attempt this one. Even Hillmaster Dave was beaten here, but he made a valiant attempt and got about two thirds of the way up before being whupped into submission.
We are now in a pleasant-ish little family-run tearoom-cum-B&B after a lasagne at the local pub (the White Swan - with the nicest landlord in the world, he even offered me some Radox) which we just made it in time for. I'm very happy to be in bed - and I've taken a photo of myself to illustrate just how bad you can look after only three days of LEJOG...