LEJOG Day 5 - Barnstaple

It’s a day off - woohoo!  We’re in Barnstaple at the Cedars Inn.  It’s run by a chain called Green King and we’ve stayed in a few of their establishments.  Their restaurants are very pubby - fish n chips, bangers and mash - but their rooms are very nice.  We have a big king-sized bed, a heated towel rail (it’s laundry day!), and a massive shower.  Also a very nice garden for having a drink in!

The Cedars Inn

Look at that ceiling

Barnstaple market



Very European


Washing method - wash, roll and stomp

Enjoying the garden

The hotel is in a village about a mile and a half outside of Barnstaple.  If I were to do the hotel booking project again, I would make sure that all the places we stay in are in the absolute centre of town.  Anyhow, we had a nice stroll down the hill to the centre of town for shopping and lunch.  Steve had cycling shorts that blew out yesterday, my shorts are great but all are the exact same style so the friction points are in the same point every day and there’s been a scarcity of things like shampoo / body wash at the hotels / b&bs - enough for a shower, but not an extra palmful of soap for the daily shower stomp to clean the salt out of the gear.  One little sachet of shampoo each isn’t going to cut it.  I’m trying some cushioned pads for my ‘princess and the pea foot’ and we need some baby wipes for the bike engineering jobs.

Lunch was at a place called Bar 62 which had a carvery, which is basically a Sunday Lunch.  They had nice meats and plenty of on plan veg so we gave it a go.  The place was lovely - leather furniture, panelled walls and this amazing ceiling.  Managed to find a taxi back so nap time, exactly what you should do on a rest day!

Did an afternoon gear review and, nope, there still isn’t anything we can discard.  We’re using the tools and the clothes for day / evening.  Wash kits are stuff that we’re using, plus we’ve added shampoo!  The weather is warm for the next few days so we’ll still be on orange shirts, but looks like it cools off next week so we’ll need those long sleeves!

Where do we store the tandem at night was yesterday’s question.  Places it’s been stored so far have been:

2 function rooms

A beer cellar

A garage

An entrance hallway

A squash court

Because it is a bit of a beast to store, would be difficult to fit in a hotel room and there’s no way we could drag it upstairs, I confirmed with each place we’re staying at that they would have a a place to store it.  The only one I don’t like is a B&B in Kendal where we have to chain it to their front railing. Space is very limited there that night, but I’m still looking to see if that one can be changed.

Light dinner in the garden.  Early bed as we have a big hill to climb tomorrow!

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 8, 2023 at 7:51 PM

    Loving the blog, nearly missed my train stop the other day whilst reading it! Sounds like the beginnings of an epic adventure. Chris x

    ReplyDelete

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