Day 15
June 25th - From Shrewsbury to Ross-on-Wye

What a day this turned out to be. I was woken early by the sound of traffic splashing along the road outside my bedroom window and when I got up and looked out it was almost torrential. Fortunately by the time I had ploughed my way through that breakfast, which was every bit as good as the landlady had promised, the rain had eased a little. It was steady rather than heavy as I made my way through roundabout after roundabout and away from Shrewsbury. I knew from yesterday that, if I stayed on the A49, then I would be heading in the right direction. The wind had really picked up since yesterday but it was now mainly a northerly and was helping me along.
The first town I stopped at was a place called Church Stretton. I made a point of stopping here as I knew it had a youth hostel and I planned to stop there to book a bed further south. As it turned out I couldn't find the hostel but I went into the tourist information centre instead. They looked up the youth hostel website and were unable to find one the right distance away. I decided it would have to be a b&b probably in Hereford which was 55 miles south of my start point. I had a coffee and a teacake in a cafe in Church Stretton then got back on the road. By now it felt as though I was standing in two buckets of water but I consoled myself with the thought that at least I couldn't get any wetter.
At times on the main road there was often a river to my left and I spent a lot of time holding up the traffic by cycling several feet away from the kerb. All the drivers seemed to be understanding about it, I think they were probably quite amused by it. I turned off the A49 for a while to have a look at Ludlow which turned out to be a carbon-copy of Totnes but without the smell of burning josticks. By lunchtime I had reached Leominster and after stopping for a sandwich I made my way back to the A49 which meant crossing a bridge over a very swollen river.
A few miles further on I went through a section of roadworks and then saw a "Road Ahead Closed" sign. I thought, being on a bike, whatever the problem I would still be able to get through. Several cars and lorries were also ignoring the sign and carrying straight on. The problem turned out not to be roadworks - it was a flooded road. Cars were going through slowly on the wrong side of the road where the water was at its shallowest and I decided to do the same. It started off ok but then it got deeper, and deeper. At one point both my feet were underwater and I was struggling to keep moving. I had a car right behind me and I knew he would be keen to keep moving so I tried to do the same. I could feel the panniers dragging in the water and then I remembered that my laptop was in one of them. It was in a several layers of bubblewrap but I wasn't sure it was waterproof. Eventually I got through it without falling off and pulled off to one side to take some photos. The driver of the car that was following me gave me a clap and a thumbs-up but I was too busy worrying about my soggy laptop. Luckily this turned out to be the only major problem I had with flooding today.
I was now on my way to Hereford and, with that following wind, was making good time. I got there at about 5pm and decided to carry on a bit further and on the outskirts of the town I saw another sign for a tourist information centre. I stopped there to find out which places were good for b&b's but they managed to find a youth hostel at a place called Welsh Bicknor near Ross-on-Wye which was about 15 miles further on. The lady there tried phoning the hostel to see if they had a free bed but the line was constantly engaged. Anyway, it had now stopped raining for the first time today, I was feeling ok and fairly confident of making it so that became my target.
The road which had been fairly flat to this point suddenly started going up and down a bit and by the time I got near the youth hostel I didn't have much left in the tank. The road to the hostel was a really steep climb up and then a steep down and turned into a muddy lane. I came to a fork in the road and couldn't see any signs so I guessed left as the right fork looked even narrower and steeper. I carried along this lane for about another mile and came to a big white building with a load of bikes outside and assumed this must be the hostel. I went in and saw a book asking visitors to sign in, which youth hostels don't usually have. Then, on a table in the foyer, I saw a load of pamphlets about heroin addiction at which point a surprised-looking man appeared who quickly ushered me out and pointed me in the right direction for the hostel which was that narrow, steep right fork a mile back. I'm just glad I didn't get to the point of saying that I wanted to check-in or I could have spent the next few months in a rehab centre trying to persuade them that I really wasn't a drug-addict.
I plodded back up the hill, took the other fork and struggled down the muddy lane to the hostel only to find that they had a school group in and were fully-booked. The lady running the hostel told me there was a hotel in the village so back up the lane I went, down the big hill, found the hotel and they were having their rooms refurbished so I got redirected to another hotel about a mile away. By now I had really had enough so even when it turned out to be way more expensive than anything else on this trip I didn't argue. I guess this is the down-side to not planning accommodation on a trip like this !
78 miles not only makes this the furthest I have gone on this trip but the furthest I have gone in one day since I was 16 ! The total is now 914 with about 336 to go but I am hoping to cut a bit off that by crossing the Severn Bridge tomorrow and avoiding Gloucester altogether.

The Routemap

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