07/07/2023 – PCR2023 – Day 6

It was a strange feeling to wake up inside, I had spent every night of the race so far under the stars. It was nice not to be cold though. The morning was spent picking up my things from charge, trying to dry the last of my clothes under hand dryers and grabbing some food from the restaurant.

We congregated by the bikes that were all tied up in the car park of the Ferry having a little natter whilst we eagerly awaited to get underway with the rest of the race. There was around 570km to go to Llandudno from the ferry so the sooner we could get underway the better.

Having done the race last year and taken this exact ferry earlier in the year with my Barcelona trip, I knew the tactic and passed it onto Laurence. We needed to be right at the front of the queue to get off. It could save us a chunky amount of time getting through passport control. Easily 10-20 minutes given the number of riders that were on the boat.

Laurence and I set off at 7am at a good pace to try and gap the people behind us a little bit. Once we got out of Portsmouth the roads were nice and quiet and we ate the miles up. After about an hour we decided we needed to stop for a nature break and some fuel so we entered Bishops Waltham and grabbed enough snacks to last a while before rejoining the route behind the masses and picking them off one by one.

Laurences missing spoke was still causing issues and was a worry for him so upon reaching Winchester we pulled over into a bike shop and the wonderful people at Bespoke Cycling worked on his bike straight away whilst I went and splashed the cash at the fancy M&S treating myself to a meal deal and other vegan treats.

Upon my return to the bike shop I decided that I wanted them to have a look at my rear mech so once Laurences wheel had been returned to a usable state they had a look at mine. They tinkered with it and gave it a clean which made it slightly better.

Once back on the road we were a bit behind schedule but had achieved a lot and so should be able to push on at a good speed and late into the night.

Checkpoint 2 was in sight and was the other side of Shaftsbury. We were motoring along but it got to a point where it was clear that Laurence was a little stronger than I was so I sent him on his way and took the rest of the country lanes solo.

One of the highlights of the day was riding up the Hovis Bike Advert Hill in Shaftsbury which is a very steep cobbled climb. It was certainly tough but was a good laugh (maybe the feelings for the climb but also the whole race).

I rocked up at Checkpoint 2 134km into the day right after Laurence and Chris (from Day 1) had left missing them individually by a couple of minutes. I was pretty wiped out so took another decent break, filling up on water and was tempted to even have a nap.

The break extended far longer than I had planned and ended up being 1 and a half hours meaning that when I left it had been 9 hours 45 minutes since leaving the ferry and had completed 134km meaning an average elapsed speed of 13.7kmph which given how good of a rest I had had overnight, wasn’t ideal.

My riding on the bike was really efficient with minimal stops but it was the long breaks that had eaten into the day but I pressed on. Loz and Raph were up ahead swell so it would be good to catch up with them and have a chat.

The next highlight of the trip was heading into Bath and going all the way to Bristol on the railway bike path. It passed through tunnels, old railway stations and took me right to the northern edge of Bristol where I found a sneaky McDonalds just a few hundred meters off course.

The idea of a McDonalds (something strictly reserved for 3am after a night out) was so enticing I kept up a good speed to get there and ordered a huge meal of McPlants with extra Pattys on to get the extra protein which had been lacking the rest of the race.

Checking the trackers Loz and Raph were still up ahead so after a few voice notes we arranged to meet up just the other side of the Severn Bridge in Chepstow for some food and to decide on a plan on where to stay etc.

The sun was setting as I headed over the bridge, a route that I’d taken before but is still pretty special. Loz and Raph were pulled over at a service station so I rolled up and gave them a big embrace. They were stocking up on some fuel and definitely not getting a replacement stem from a friend after one of theirs had broken as that would be against race rules…

Once they had definitely not swapped over the stems we set off into the night with the aim to go as late into the night as we could. We had done 230km so far which was a good total given that we’d started a little later than a normal day would start but wanted to get a bit more out of the day.

We didn’t have a plan in mind but decided to just plod on as late as we could.

It had gotten very dark which was exacerbated by the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere in Wales heading north.

The sleepiness was starting to hit as we got into Abergavenny and so started looking for a spot to fit all of us in. It wasn’t easy and we checked out a church but had a bit too much security around for us to feel comfortable which was very different to France.

There was however a park or two in the town. One had the town fair set up in so that was ruled out but thankfully there was a second where we hid under a tree to give us a bit of cover got the sleeping kit out at 12:30 and set an alarm for 4:30. Another glorious restorative sleep…