Day 14
June 24th - From St Helens to Shrewsbury

It took me ages to get going today. I came down for breakfast at 9am to find nobody around so I sat in the dining room for about 10 minutes waiting for someone to appear. When no-one did I decided my time would be better spent packing my stuff into the panniers and getting ready to go. Having done that I came back down at about 9.30 and found a cleaner who said she would find the chef. A few minutes later a bleary-eyed woman appeared, grunted at me and disappeared into the kitchen and shortly afterwards I had my fry-up.
I eventually got on the bike some time after 10am, it had been raining during the night but it was now dry but cloudy. I headed south towards Warrington looking for a Halfords store to get my new tyre and found one within a few miles. Having spent half an hour putting the new one on I set off again towards the town of Whitchurch which I knew was due south.
After I had been riding for a couple of hours it became very grey overhead and I knew that rain was not far off. It was lunchtime so I decided to look for somewhere to stop in the hope that I would be indoors when the heavens opened. I found a restaurant and was about to go in but then I noticed that it looked a little posh and when I saw a group of about 6 people all in their Sunday best going in I decided that I would be lowering the tone just a bit too much. I carried on to the next place which was a cafe in a garden centre - much more my scene. When I came out it was drizzling but not enough to stop me and soon I saw a sign for Shrewsbury which, if I made it there, would mean I had done 60 miles so that became my target for the day.
A few miles on I looked at the gps and noticed that it was showing my speed ok but the distance travelled wasn't changing. It was stuck on 20.6 miles but the vdo was showing 25. It hadn't seized up like before so I pressed 'stop' then 'start' and it came back to life. Having just downloaded the data I have lost 4 miles somewhere and if you look closely at the map you can see the gap. I'm really impressed by the various ways this thing finds to go wrong.
The area was now reasonably flat and I occasionally had the wind behind me so I was able to put my foot down a bit. The landscape was quite picturesque in places but nothing to compare with what I had seen in week one in Scotland. Photo opportunities today were few and far between.
When I reached the outskirts of Shrewsbury (or 'Pothole City' as I now call it) I asked a few people if there was a youth hostel in the town and they all said they thought there was but no-one knew where it was. I made my way into the town centre and asked at the police station. A lady there looked it up on the internet for me and found that the nearest one was actually 15 miles south in a town called Church Stretton. I didn't fancy another 15 miles so I found a b&b nearby run by a lady who must be 90 and whose house is like being in a time-warp back to the 50's - round light switches, two-pin plugs etc ! Anyway she seems very nice and she has promised me a mega-breakfast in the morning. I walked into the town centre earlier and it's very olde-worlde with tudor buildings everywhere and very proud of the fact that Charles Darwin was born here.
62 miles today takes it to 836 in two weeks which is 418 per week and I have one more week to do 414 ish. I couldn't cut it closer if I tried. Barring accidents, lightning strikes, floods and dodgy knees it's looking like a finish late next Sunday.

The Routemap

The Speed (in blue) and the Elevation (in green).