The Final Map – Day 48

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  At some points the information was out of date (one motel listed on the maps had been closed for over 10 years) but they were, on the whole, an invaluable resource.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.