Weather: Sunny and hot
Total distance: 247 miles
Breakfast was an absolute treat - quite a difference to Alex's concrete porridge from the previous morning! It was a new experience for Alex, as being a northerner, he hadn't ever experienced hearing radio 3 playing softly in the background and using fine bone china for his breakfast tea. Alex thought that he had extended his little finger in the correct way when drinking his tea, but I had to correct him. Patrick, the proprietor, was wonderful yet again, helping us change our route over the Rivers Trent and Humber, even giving us some sponsor money as well.
We made good progress over yet more flat terrain, although cross-winds were hard going in places. At the lovely village of Misterton, an elderly couple got chatting to Alex and gave him a fiver. We diced with death near Drax power station as we were forced to take some terribly busy A-roads packed with lorries that seemed intent on over-taking us badly - needless to say, a TESCO lorry almost knocked me off my bike (clearly they know how much we despise them).
After the beautifully named village of Swinefleet, we arrived in the jewel of Yorkshire that is the port of Goole. After riding around this dump getting vaguely lost we happened across a McDonalds for the loo - the people inside were staring at us, apparently stunned to see that two people could be so thin in comparison to them. Alex was clearly the first cyclist to have ever entered the McDonalds at Goole (or quite possibly, the world). McDonalds had installed bike racks in their car park, but fittingly it's clientele had placed a moped in it rather than a bicycle.
We made speedy progress up towards York, although our legs were starting to feel the strain. As if to taunt us, the York sign was about 2 miles outside of the city limits, with another separate village and numerous paddocks in-between! Yet more appalling photos of Alex and I were taken once more by the sign. York was a cinch to navigate, looking very smart and quite possibly being the only consistently nice city in the north (although Luke would of course retract this statement once he had visited Durham!).
On reaching the YHA in the dark, and having placed our belongings in a dorm that smelt like a horse had died in it, we ventured out eagerly with directions towards the local pub, but once again we were doomed - clearly it had been abducted by aliens as no one had heard of "The Dormouse" pub. So, after a trip to spar we were armed with potato salad, tortellini, spring onions and chocolate fudge cake - just what a nutritionist would recommend for such an expedition. On returning to the dorm, we met a nice, if fanatical cyclist who had partaken in the London-Endinburgh-London cycle race (or LEL as it is known in inner cycling circles!). This monstrous beast of a race involves tackling over 180 miles a day in just 5 days, snatching a few hours of sleep in hedges along the way. When he started getting technical about gears and tools for changing spokes with names such as grip-ring-shift-manglers we just nodded and said "yes". Anyway, he clearly approved of our efforts as he gave me his card, but I don't think we're cut out for such marathon trips! The showers left much to be desired, with intermittent lighting, dribbling water, curly hairs, and in one of them even rope! Later on, the star of our trip arrived, a chap whom we named Colonel Sanders. A very well-spoken chap, he entered the room by announcing "greetings" before immediately undertaking the task of cleaning his denches whilst introducing himself. The smell of the dead horse had clearly been from his unwashed cycling shoes and jersey that dated back to 1945 when we undertook a ride with "Wuthering Smithe" and "Colonel Foster" on a Coast to Coast trip in the '50s. I fell asleep to the sound of Colonel Sanders irregular breathing pattern that sounded like he was about to become deceased, oblivious to the fact that whilst I was in the shower, Alex had had the unfortunate sight of seeing Colonel Sanders bottom and more...
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