June = end of the holiday year at work.  As usual, I've ended up with a couple more days left than I can carry over, so decided to put them to good use.

Walking the Wye is all very well, but it's slow progress.  I found a nice chunk that happens to be bridleway, and last Wednesday took the bike for a day out.

Credenhill to Bredwardine, 30km in total.  Some road, some farm track, and then on the way back, several fields full of sheep and sheep poo (at this point attempting to follow the "Three Rivers Ride", apparently).

To be honest, I think I would have avoided two of the three poofields if people were better at signposting things!

Or if I'd been less stubborn about not buying an entire map just for the sake of 4 inches of path that wasn't covered by overlap.  Or if I'd remembered to print out the screenshot of said 4 inches, rather than trying to work from a screenshot saved on my phone.

But no, instead I find myself in the middle of a field, following a fairly obvious track that wasn't actually what I thought it was.  Sheep running away everywhere, being very noisy about it... and then I ran out of field.  A well locked gate, with no obvious path of any sort on the other side.  Oops.  Turn around, go back, track along hedges until the correct path is located.

At this point the most pressing thought running through my head was "I'm cycling where I shouldn't be, pissing off a lot of sheep, and I'm wearing a very bright pink jacket.  Any second now an angry farmer is going to appear, possibly with a shotgun."

Luckily, no-one did.  I found the track, got back to the road and returned to the car in one piece, where I then spent half an hour trying to scrape the worst of the shit off my tyres before putting the bike back inside.  Moral of that story:  pack binbags.  and maybe a brush.

tags: cycling wye