The Parkes and Stockham Cycle Part 2: TransAmerica

Date: Tuesday 28^th September 2010

Route:  Bumpass, Virginia – Yorktown, Virginia 

Distance: 126 miles 

Total climb: 3649ft

Net climb: -233ft

It had to be an early start; we still had over 120 miles to Yorktown, but we were going to make it in one day (and hoped also to make it back into first place in our fictional race to Yorktown).  We emerged from the Rebel Motel at 5:30 to head over to McDonalds for breakfast.  It was so early in the morning that even the servers under the golden arches were confused and proceeded to bring me two breakfasts in seven different servings.  As McDonalds go it was a fairly cultural experience with photos depicting the history of Louisa and the local area covering the walls.  There was even a photo of Patrick Henry (another founding father who apparently wanted either liberty or death) standing in the muddy main street of Louisa.

Setting history aside in order to focus on the present we made it back to the motel and were off and away by 7am, comfortably our earliest start.  Early morning riding clearly suited us and we made rapid progress, arriving in Ashland before 8:30.  Ashland had been our target for the previous day and it was a shame not to have stopped there for the evening.  It is a beautifully maintained town, with an old fashioned railway running through the centre.  We had decided to stop for a coffee break on what was already turning into a warm morning.  Team Stockham were already in residence and while Poppa Stockham sorted out drinks and cakes, I headed off and signed the visitors’ book in the Ashland train station and visitors centre.  We all met up at Suzanne’s coffee shop, where the homemade cakes were the perfect preparation for a long afternoon of cycling.  After Fred had watched me consume more drinks (milkshake, water, tea and juice) than was decent, we were back on the road, following the train tracks out of Ashland and then heading out on the busier roads towards Mechanicsville. 

It was at this point that the spotlight of international fame finally caught up with us.  Stopped at a traffic light, a car asked us to pull over in the next car park – it turned out that the driver was a journalist from the Herald-Progress who had been called out by the lady in charge of the visitors’ centre.  We spent about half-an-hour answering questions and having our photo taken, before he headed off to type up what was undoubtedly one of the hot stories of the day.

The day itself was starting to get distinctly hot – a welcome change from the two days of rain that had preceded it.  As we arrived at Mechanicsville, the traffic got heavier and required us to be vigilant to avoid the large lorries that started to queue up behind us.  Then at a traffic light, in the space of a couple of seconds my rear tire went totally flat.  As luck would have it, Diana had timed things well and we were within ten metres of a gas station.  We plonked ourselves down in the forecourt on a stretch of glass whilst I removed the nail that had punctured the tire and replaced the inner tube.  It proved to be a good time for a break as after we got back on the bikes the traffic was significantly lighter.  The next section of our route took us through the Richmond National Battlefield Park, and in particular numerous sites of the Seven Days Battles.  There seemed to be memorial plaques every few hundred metres, describing events from those battles.  The stories of war and revolution kept us so preoccupied that we cycled right past the garage before the town of Elko where we had arranged to meet Team Stockham.  We only realised our error when we arrived at Glendale – about 5 miles too late.  A quick call to Team Stockham revealed that they too had failed to stop at the agreed rendezvous point and were sat at a gas station in Charles City about 20 miles ahead of us.  Reassured by the Team that there would be places for us to grab lunch before we made it to Charles City we decided to head on and left the diner at Glendale behind.

We headed down Willis Church Road only to be met by signs indicating that the road was closed.  There was no obvious diversion so we decided to carry on – hoping that there would be no significant obstacles in our way.  Our luck just about held; the road was blocked by two large piles of stones and it is possible that a bridge we crossed was not entirely safe, but we made it through, carrying the girls over the stones, and emerged into the middle of the recreated Battle of Malvern Hill (also known as the Battle of Poindexter’s Farm).  Civil war cannons were ranged across the fields, so we decided to put on a gun-show of our own; our spirits high at the prospect of lunch.

After the battlefield we joined SR 5 – the road to Williamsburg; unfortunately we also found that the diner at the junction was closed.  Looking at our map there was nothing between where we were and Charles City – that meant that by the time we stopped there for lunch we would have done 56 miles without proper food.  Still, we were closing in on Yorktown and with that thought at the forefront of our minds we rode on through the swamplands alongside the James River.  Our next mental marker was the start of the Capital Trail – a cycle path that takes riders most of the way into Yorktown – we were both looking forward to the point at which we would no longer have to share the road with cars.  Aside from one unfriendly cyclist (we have arrived at the conclusion that most cyclists that you come across on tours are a little odd – we would like to think of ourselves as the exception to that rule of thumb) who was walking along the road and seemed offended by our offer of assistance, we saw few cars and even fewer people.  We were left to reflect that this hot, forested swamp which was the location of most of the early settlements in the US must have been a far cry from the other Eden that the first settlers had hoped for.  It gave us some insight into how tough life must have been for those early adventurers.

The only cloud on the horizon was the fact that I had become strangely concerned with knowing where Team Stockham were – in truth it was a combination of being hungry and slightly annoyed at the fact that I had understood them to say that there had been places to eat a long time before Charles City.  It turned out that they were enjoying themselves looking around Colonial Williamsburg – about 20 miles away.  I suggested that they should head back to the restaurant for food, thus guilt tripping them into leaving Williamsburg and heading back to us – for no apparent reason.  I can only belatedly apologise to them for dragging them away – my focus on getting the ride finished and ensuring that I knew where our back-up was meant that I lost sight of the fact that they were supposed to be having a holiday too.

Still, we had some riding left to do (about 40 miles), the first part of which continued along the wonderful Capital Trail.  There was another brief section on the SR5 before we arrived at the Chickahominy River.  As we passed over that expanse of water and back onto the second section of the Capital Trail, the opportunity arose to regain first place in our imaginary race across the country. An amateur cyclist, casually enjoying the views of the river, was no match for our excited attack. The challenge was now how to maintain the lead to glory.  This concern came to a head in the final section of the Capital Trail that branched off from SR5.  A cyclist was gaining on us and so we sped up until we were almost sprinting.  We had to stop as the Trail crossed a road and at that point he caught up with us. We chatted with him for a while – side by side but always ensuring that we stayed half a wheel ahead of him.  As we arrived at the start of the Capital Parkway though he waved us goodbye and headed back for home.  We had held onto first place.

The Capital Parkway takes up the final 21 miles of the route, it is a wide, flat and quick road, but the fact that it is made of concrete means that it is bobbly and a little uncomfortable.  Fortunately we had reached it at a time when there were few cars and so we were able to pound along it at a good speed, the only obstacle to our progress being my water bottle which dropped out of its rack and almost caused what would have been a nasty crash. 

On the approach to Williamsburg the Parkway runs right along the bank of the James River, providing us with a glorious sunset.  Williamsburg itself is the Disneyland of Colonial America.  It has been restored to look as it did in the early 18^th Century and it is chocked full of tourists and tour guides.  We didn’t have time to stop, but in truth did not feel as if we had missed a great deal.  I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I like the way that the US reveres its past (for the record I also love Disneyland) – it just looks as if, at Williamsburg, this has gone a step too far; the place felt more like a set from a movie than living history.  I cannot imagine what it must be like to go to William and Mary University – which itself is located in Williamsburg.  University is a surreal enough experience without having to wend your way through daily historical re-enactments…

In any event, we made our way through Williamsburg, with Greta ensuring that we avoided the car-only tunnel.  East of Williamsburg we arrived at the banks of the York River.  It was dark by this stage and we paused briefly to put on our night cycling kit and to place an order for Dos Equis with Team Stockham.  We then turned a corner and in the distance we caught our first glimpse of the lights of Yorktown.  We rode steadily on into the night and finally left the Parkway behind as we turned left towards our final destination.  Aside from almost cycling the wrong way down the main road into Yorktown, we progressed serenely to the waterfront; Greta still not putting a foot wrong.  We turned right and started to climb the final hill of our journey.  Unfortunately, I was in far too high a gear and had to wheel back down to the bottom to start again (the first time on the whole trip that I had had to pull such a manoeuvre).  Finally, we made it up the 20 metre section of road, only to be met by a road-block.  According to Greta we were less than 500 metres from the end of our journey: perhaps our luck had run out.  It hadn’t.  We had, in fact, arrived at a cross-road where we had to turn left.  Fifty metres down the road the Yorktown Monument came into view.  The Monument commemorates the surrender of the British to the American and French troops in the American Revolutionary War, but on this particular evening it was decked out in custom-made bunting and Union Flags, and on its steps were our arrival party.  Amanda, Helen and Neita had joined up with Team Stockham to greet us at the finish. 

The rest of the evening is something of a blur.  There were hugs, photographs, a malfunctioning confetti champagne bottle, and once we had established that Fred did in fact want to share a room with Helen rather than me (which was, perhaps, predictable) a waterfront hotel and a celebratory meal at the Yorktown Pub.  It was a happy and surreal evening.  The two non-cyclists had cycled across America.

 

Date: Monday 27^th September   

Route:  Charlottesville, Virginia – Bumpass, Virginia 

Distance: 72.5 miles 

Total climb: 2841ft

Net climb: 63ft

We had made it through the rain, but the yesterday had taken its toll on our bikes.  Rosie’s brakes had decided to stop working, and Diana, as ever, was keen for a tune-up.  So after grabbing a quick continental breakfast from our motel, we headed out to find a bike shop.  A few wrong turns had the advantage of giving us a tour of Charlottesville, which seemed like a great town, but we did eventually arrive at what was by far the swankiest bike shop on the route.  Students use bikes, so it’s fair to assume they get a lot of business, despite the fact that they were tucked away on an industrial estate, and they did an excellent job.  After the tune up the girls were moving better than they had done for weeks.  The stop was a little disappointing though, partly because it took the shop half an hour to process Fred’s card payment and partly because the staff were somewhat unwelcoming.  The staff of every other bike shop we had visited on the trip had been friendly and interested in our adventures; these chaps seemed a little too cool for school.  We assumed it was due to the fact that, being close to Yorktown, they must see lots of TransAmerica riders, but even so, their attitude took a little bit of the sheen off our stay in Charlottesville.

Still, the bikes were fixed and we were within 200 miles of Yorktown.  There was one complication.  After four miles of riding we arrived at Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monitcello; one of the places that I had been desperate to visit when planning the route.  We met Team Stockham at the visitors’ entrance and despite Fred’s schedule meaning that we needed to finish in two days he agreed, without hesitation, to let me go and do the tour.  Mother Stockham was also keen to visit so we headed up in the tour bus and up to the entrance of the house itself.  American’s do tourist attractions very well indeed; they have no aversion to glorifying their own history, something which the British now seem rather embarrassed to do, and there is much to glorify in Monticello.  Jefferson was a genuine polymath and not only was he responsible for designing and supervising the building of the whole house (twice) he also invented a number of the creature comforts that made the house so advanced for its time.  There are a number of reminders though, that even a man as brilliant as Jefferson was flawed.  As Fred pointed out it seems utterly baffling that a man who wrote so eloquently about freedom and the equality of all men in the Declaration of Independence, could have owned slaves.  This becomes all the more difficult to understand in light of the fact that he fell in love with, and had a family with one of those slaves.

We finished the tour of Monticello and drove back past Jefferson’s grave, upon which all that is inscribed is “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom and father of the University of Virginia.”  Not a bad CV and he didn’t even mention that he had been President.  It was a solemn but inspiring end to the trip to Monticello.

Back at the visitors’ centre we met back up with Fred and Poppa Stockham, who had bought sandwiches and hot chocolate for us to tuck into.  It had been driving with rain for the whole morning and it looked set to continue, but it was now 2pm and we had cycled less than 5 miles.  We had to get cracking. 

Our route for the remainder of the day was through the Virginia piedmont; although we knew there were no more significant climbs on the route, the areas is criss-crossed by rivers and streams meaning that the landscape undulates continually between each water source.  The driving rain continued as we passed Ash Law, the home of James Monroe, the fifth President of the US and another of its founding fathers.  There was no time to stop now though as we carried on a fair pace through the water-soaked landscape.  We paused briefly when Fred’s chain jammed (for about the fifth time on the trip) after a sharp right turn; but after that Parkes was flying – keen to make up the time that we had lost in the morning.  I was not as keen to sprint in the wet weather and for a while we were separated by a distance of a few hundred metres.  As we pulled into a supermarket at Palmyra tempers were a little frayed (something which had barely happened at all during the entire trip), due in no small part to the rain, which by now was so heavy as to be limiting our range of visibility. 

We had arranged to meet Team Stockham at Palmyra, but there was no sign of them at the supermarket.  We pressed on along the route to a bank where Fred stopped to get some cash out and I managed to cut my finger on a plastic sign.  We sheltered under the drive-through cashpoint (people really never walk in America) trying to call Team Stockham and figure out what to do.  At last we received a text message telling us to wait at the junction at which the bank was located – Team Stockham were returning with food.   Fred was keen to press on, but just in time Tammy the Texas Chariot pulled into view.  In a moment of genius Team Stockham had driven a 20 mile round trip to find a Burger King – it was just what the doctor ordered.  Any tension there had been vanished, as did my lingering concern that my back wheel might be catching on my brakes.

Rarely had a meal had such a positive effect on our morale.  We were rolling again, and when the rain finally stopped (at around 5pm), rolling quickly.  We turned left on SR 605 at Tabscott, passed the service station which we had planned to stop at, and on into Mineral, home of Total Body Fitness by Tammy (the local gym) and the inviting “Almost Heaven Smoke BBQ” restaurant.   Barbeque food could have been enough to break our resolve and make us stop but we were now both determined to put ourselves in a position where we could complete the ride the following day.  We continued and turned right onto SR 652, where in a display of driving brilliance a car overtook us at such speed that in subsequently turning right he almost flipped his car.  After Jefferson, he was unquestionably the day’s second genius.

The route continued across the beautiful shores of Lake Ann.  Exclusive and glamorous, it seemed odd that the next town should have been named Bumpass, but there we had to stop.  In an ideal world we would have made it to Ashland – our planned stopping point and still 20 miles away – but by the time we arrived at Bumpass the night was pitch black and the sensible option was to stop, get a proper dinner and make an early start.  Fortunately, Team Stockham were at Bumpass Fire Station to meet us and drive us back to the town of Louisa, where we had rooms at the Rebel Motel.

Our plan was to get some food on board and then get to bed.  Luckily for us there was a Pizza Hut just around the corner from our hotel (as well as those other staples McDonalds, Wendy’s and a few other purveyors of hôt cuisine) and there we dined like kings.  We were informed by the waitress that Louisa was the “bright lights” of the local area, nonetheless at 9:30 everywhere was empty.  Still our focus was on getting to sleep – no bars for us.  Our main concern was the people in the room next to us, who when we arrived we playing very loud guitar music.  By the time we returned from the Hut, though, their thrash music vigil had ended.  We could get some sleep.  We had a big day ahead of us.

 Other matters of note:

• At Monticello, Mother Stockham, as keen to speak to strangers as ever, struck up a conversation with the tour bus driver.  Randomly, we found out that his daughter had married a man from Saltburn – a twenty minute drive from our home in North Yorkshire.  We also found out that one of the security guards at the site had a friend visiting him from England who was in the US doing a bike ride across Virginia.  Small world.

Date: Sunday 26^th September   

Route:  Lexington, Virginia – Charlottesville, Virginia 

Distance: 80 miles 

Total climb: 7096ft

Net climb: -507ft

We woke to a grey and wet morning and what looked like being the first sustained period of rain that we had encountered on the entire trip.  The weather, though, reflected a greater concern that had been with me for a couple of days and was to come to fruition today.  We had one remaining significant climb left on the route – up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains and by all accounts it was steep.  I was not looking forward to it.  Fortunately, Parkes was his usual optimistic and reassuring self which ensured that breakfast (in the diner next to the motel) was an enjoyable start to the day.

After a photo-session outside the motel we had an easy ride through the beautiful town of Lexington (home to a famous military academy) and out along the South River to the town of Vesuvius, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It being a Sunday, everything was closed and so we abandoned our planned stop prior to the climb.  It had been raining the entire morning and by this stage we were drenched and very cold.  The climb would, at least, warm us up. 

The road took a sharp turn to the right and then we were climbing.  It really was a long, steep climb through a dense forest, made more difficult by the passing traffic and the non-stop rain that served not only to make the road slippery but also to limit visibility through water-covered sunglasses.  We were in our lowest gears and just concentrating on keeping the pedals turning, but eventually, after about an hour of climbing we made it to the top and stopped under a bridge to dry ourselves off as best we could.  We had done it; there were no more hills to conquer.  We were at 3500 feet above sea level and we were finishing at the sea.  For the first time on the trip I started to think about arriving in York Town.

Nonetheless, we had to crack on.  It was cold and wet and we still had to navigate the Blue Ridge Parkway before dropping down onto the Piedmont (the flat inland areas to the east of the Blue Ridge Mountains).   The Parkway is a famous drive along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains renowned for its magnificent scenery.  Unfortunately, we were denied any semblance of a view by the fact that we were cycling in the clouds.  Disappointing as this was, the mist added an extra dimension to the ride and required significant amounts of concentration, as we were unable to see more that 5 metres ahead of ourselves at times.

We needed a proper break and just in time, Team Stockham arrived and pulled over in a lay-by.   Towels, snacks and dry clothes were the order of the day (along with a newspaper which I put down the front of my jersey for the downhill – Tour de France style), and once we set back off along the parkway we were significantly warmer and feeling much better for it.  Our plan was to complete the rest of the Parkway and then stop for lunch in Rockfish Gap.  We kept going through the rain and mist and enjoyed a long, winding downhill on the way to warmth and hot food. 

The plan was flawed.  We arrived at Rockfish Gap to find that there was nothing there, at all.  Not even a gas station with Hunt Brothers pizzas.  We were going to have to keep riding and hope that we stumbled across something en route. 

Our low morale was not helped by the fact that the next section of the route was the worst part of the day; a short stretch along a very busy road with no hard shoulder.  Thankfully we soon turned sharp right and wound down a very steep section of gravel covered road that it appeared that cars were not very keen to travel on.  One explanation for this aversion may have been the road’s ability to fox GPS systems as half-way down the road we met up again with Team Stockham, coming back up from a dead-end that G2 had taken them down.

After the excitement and beauty of the morning, our afternoon was more prosaic.  We cycled along a series of minor roads, flanked intermittently by houses and woodlands; with the highlight a bizarre nativity scene in the yard of a house that featured a urinating boy.  No explanation was given.

We were within 25 miles of our final destination, but it was about 5pm and we had not eaten lunch.  The small back-roads that we were riding seemed to offer little hope of a diner or even a shop and so we were beginning to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we were just going to have to go without.  Then, right on cue we turned a corner to see Team Stockham parked up outside a large warehouse, which we soon discovered was the Chiler Peach Orchard Warehouse.  We had arrived just as they were shutting up shop.  Team Stockham bought up the warehouse’s remaining reserves of peach milkshake and cookies and we sat in the warmth of the car and ate as much as we could manage. 

It could not have been a better timed stop and after it not even the hardening rain could bring down our spirits.  We continued along the quiet back-roads before joining the main road into Charlottesville.  The only remaining obstacles for the day were the rain, finding our motel and the fact that Fred’s brakes had almost totally stopped working.  To counter Fred’s irrepressible momentum, I rode at the back for the traffic heavy few miles into Charlottesville.  Fred is far more aware of what is going on around him when cycling, so our general policy has always been for Fred to ride at the back and call when there is oncoming traffic (this is generally the more dangerous place to ride and I extremely grateful that Parkes has both the ability and the courage to do it).  Knowing my limitations as far as road awareness is concerned I took my role very seriously, but may have overcompensated.  The people of Charlottesville may have been puzzled (as was Fred) as to why I spent the final two miles repeatedly shouting “Clear…still clear…still clear…” as we rode into town.  Eventually Fred pointed out at some traffic lights that I only needed to mention when a car was actually approaching. 

Despite these glitches we finally met up with Team Stockham who told us to hang a left and head for the Days Inn.  Fortunately they caught up with us in time to point out that they actually meant the Budget Inn, before I had cycled too far past the entrance.  Despite its name, the motel was one of the largest and plushest that we had stayed in for days and gave us the chance to wash and dry ourselves and our clothes and sort out our kit, in the glare of a flat-screen TV.  Even better than that we only had to pop across the road to an excellent diner known as “The Villa”.  

After an excellent meal which was eaten next to the tallest man I have ever seen – comfortably over seven feet tall (and who one member of Team Stockham decided it would be a good idea to ask if he had ever played basketball) – we decided to drive around to see if any of the bars were busy.   Charlottesville is home to the University of Virginia and is a thriving college town, but it was a very, very wet Sunday night and it seemed that the students had all stayed at home.  There were lots of bars but they were all very quiet.  We decided that after a tough day a quiet night was the best option.

Points of interest:

• Whilst stopped at the peach orchard one of the proprietors warned us that the route we were supposed to be riding on was closed for maintenance and gave us some fairly unintelligible directions.  We continued on our planned course to find no sign of road works at all.  Another classic example of Americans not being entirely familiar with their surroundings.
• We dropped back into second place in the race after being overtaken by an amateur spandex warrior out for an evening ride who in passing informed us that we were “likely to get wet”.
• Despite only having to “pop” across the road to get to “the Villa” for our evening meal the rain was so hard that we drove the 40 metres to get across to the door of the restaurant.  It was really raining…

Date: Saturday 25^th September   

Route:  Radford, Virginia – Lexington, Virginia 

Distance: 100 miles 

Total climb: 6432ft

Net climb: -920ft

The breakfast buffet in the Super 8 Motel meant that we could take our food back to our rooms and enjoy a brief period of relaxation  before setting off (made all the more enjoyable by watching Chelsea get beaten 1-0 by an improving Manchester City side).  A chance meeting with a couple of fellow cyclists from Sweden also provided a welcome distraction.  They were doing the TransAm ride, but in the opposite direction.  We shared a few stories from our trip and wished them luck (wondering to ourselves how they planned to make it to the Rockies before the snows came…) before heading back out on the road for a late start at 10am.

We rolled back to the spot at which we had finished the night before and were met straight away by probably the steepest section of hill we had climbed on the whole trip.  It was short, but a tough way to get the day started and out heart-rates up.  After that short sharp shock though we were back onto rolling sections of road that led into Christiansburg and some narrow, winding roads with their fair share of blind corners. 

Nothing of note happened to us in Christiansburg, but it was a place of great significance.  Throughout the trip we had been using a set of maps from the American Adventure Cycling Association.  These maps had proved to be (generally) excellent, providing not only a great route across the States but also information about the amenities of the towns that we passed though and some general background about each of the areas that we were travelling in.  At some points the information was out of date (one motel listed on the maps had been closed for over 10 years) but they were, on the whole, an invaluable resource.  They also became the subject of a number of running gags with my constant need to look at the elevation profiles to see what hills lay ahead of us – driving Fred to the point of distraction.  The whole route was made up of 12 separate maps, each covering around 350 miles.  At Christiansburg we had made our way onto the final map.  It may sound like an insignificant detail, but on a journey of over 4000 miles it is important to have some mental markers and this was probably the most important one of the whole trip.  We only had one map left to go.

Buoyed by this fact we headed on through Christiansburg and passed under the Wilson Creek Bridge, before stopping at a gas station near Ellett.  After a twenty-mile section in quick time we felt we deserved a break for a drink and some cookies, and so sat outside on the picnic tables surrounded by Virginia Tech bunting (college football again).

Soon enough, we were back riding again, although this time on section of road specifically marked out for bikes.  Virginia takes its cycling seriously and we were now firmly on Virginia Cycle route 76. Not only did we have a portion of the road allocated to us, but we also had the benefit of frequent signs pointing the way.  This made things easier for us, but also for Team Stockham who took to following the “acorn” route 76 signs in preference to the map.

We followed the Catawba Road in a very gradual climb upward to the town of Catawba itself.  The road followed the valley floor and was a simply glorious section of the route with verdant farmland and white picket fences.  It was exactly what I had hoped Virginia would be like.  That said, although the scenery may have been food for the soul, by the time we reached Catawba, we were in need of something more substantial in the nutrition department.  Here serendipity once again played its part.  We arrived in Catawba to meet Team Stockham, stood in the doorway of the local shop.  As it happened, it was the only shop on the route for the next 20 miles and it was its final day of business.  The owners were selling up and moving on, but by pure dumb luck we had arrived on its final day.  The shop was something of a local institution and over the years had provided cyclists and hikers on the Appalachian Trail with much needed food and shelter.  Typically the shop offered both accommodation (“for one night only”) and hot food, although by now its stocks were greatly depleted and they were only offering sandwiches.  It was a shop that felt as if it had been lifted straight of the set of Dawson’s Creek or the Gilmore Girls (two of Fred’s favourite TV shows), with a genuine sense of community.  There were reminders, though, of the darker side of American life both from the reasons for the owner deciding to sell up, to the offer of a reward (posted on the front of the shop)for information leading to arrest of the perpetrator of double murder of a young couple from the local town.  America is a land of stark contradictions.

We had to focus on more immanent matters and so sat in the back room and wolfed down some much needed sandwiches, brownies and tinned fruit and chatted to the staff and some walkers who had also made their way (five miles off their route) to the store.  We still had plenty of miles to make up though and soon we were signing yet another visitors’ book and saying goodbye.

We set off at a rapid pace and after a sharp turn in the road we were heading away from the beautiful scenery of the morning and into the rather more urban environment of Daleyville.  We briefly paused to find out that one member of Team Stockham had stopped there for a manicure, and so we decided to press on and meet them in the next town on the route – Troutville. 

There was little in the way of diners/cafes in Troutville, so we stopped in the veranda outside a supermarket.  By this stage we were happy to be anywhere, provided it was out of the heat.  The added fact that the supermarket served the only decent ice-lollies that we had so far discovered in the US (the concept of a fruit lolly seems to be lost on our friends across the pond) meant that this was a pretty satisfying stop.

We had another 19 miles to Buchanan, a town that had originally been one of our designated stopping points, but which we wanted to push on past, if we could, in order to make up some time.  Our route out of Troutville took us along small roads through what appeared to be old mining towns, with viaducts and other signs of an old industrial past.  We made extremely quick progress, averaging over 20mph for the section, pausing only once to check that we were on the right road, when Greta told us to take a sharp right turn.  As ever, we were right to trust her, and we were very soon pedalling in to Buchanan.  We stopped at the town sign for Fred to pay his respects to his own personal hero, homophonous with the town itself – Mitch Buchannon – a man who has done more for beach safety than anyone else in the history of American Drama.  After that we rolled into the town itself, meeting a surprised Team Stockham who didn’t expect us to arrive for another 45 minutes.

The town itself was lovely; with an old cinema and a lively Main Street.  Pure Americana, but with a hint of Germany, as we cycled past a couple of Teutonic restaurants and houses.

We were going to head on past Buchanan and into Lexington, but we had to stop for another snack if we were going to keep going, and we managed to pick what turned out to be the best stop of the trip to date; a combination diner/drug store, it had an old-fashioned juke-box and a milkshake bar.  All of a sudden we were Richie Cunningham and Warren “Potsie” Webber, chatting to Mr and Mrs C whilst eating fries and milkshakes and listening to a selection of 50’s hits.  Just when we thought it couldn’t get any more American, we chatted to one of the other diners who was keen to know about our trip, but also let us know that the diner was the nuclear fallout shelter for the town.  The Cold War with fries.  I challenge anyone to beat that as an exercise in American clichés.

We decided to try and really gun the remaining 30 miles to Lexington, but we knew that in any event we were in for a late finish.  We rode over what we had been told was the oldest swing bridge in America and onto the frontage road of the I-81.  Not for the first time in the day we were flying.  We paused briefly to put on our night-cycling kit but other than that we didn’t stop.  By the time we made it into Lexington it was very dark indeed, but the roads were quiet and Team Stockham pointed us straight to the Red Carpet Inn, which thankfully was directly on the route. 

Another night, another pleasant (if oddly decorated) motel.  We decided that we would mix things up a touch though.  Whilst Team Stockham went off for dinner at the restaurant next door, we made an effort to catch up with our blogging and so ordered in Dominos Pizzas.  The food was not great (much worse than Dominos in the UK) and watching more college football did not speed the writing process;  nonetheless, it was good to be back in the light and warmth knowing that we had gone further than planned during the day.