A right old knees up

It was a full 35-odd miles on the road today towards my hometown of Plymouth (where the marketing slogan 'City of Discovery' is mostly about the discovering the surprisingly varied assortment of hills - gradient, camber, it has the lot) and my knees now feel as if someone has stamped on them.

It was another lovely day for biking along country roads and past farms, and I managed to eat an entire meal simply from the insects that flew helpfully into my mouth, but we had to briefly go onto the busy A38 towards Plymouth which was intimidating - busy and fast and completely unaccommodating to cyclists.

I was told that I'd picked the hilliest route through the whole of Cornwall, which is mainly because I'm dictated by where our interviewees are. I did, however, manage to add on a few extra miles by leading us along several 'scenic routes' (also known as the wrong way) which unfortunately led us down (and up) a few more hills than we really needed to do. I've already abandoned the careful plans I made earlier to mindlessly following the GPS on my iPhone, so I don't know how anything could possibly go wrong, but anyone who has foolishly let me navigate before knows how infamously bad I am at navigation. Thankfully Matt is amazingly forgiving (he also doesn't know quite how often I make these mistakes). Still, it's all building up cycling muscle for the Devon hills, right?

The good news is that I've got a home-cooked meal and decent bed to look forward to tonight and that one county - Cornwall - is now done and dusted. After this is over I'm going to live in a bungalow. In Holland.