Image credit: Heather Graz
Recognise this mountain? It is the tallest free standing mountain in the world ... Mt Kilimanjaro.
Kilimanjaro stands at 5,895 metres above sea level or 19,341 ft.
Today, we summited Kilimanjaro with our cumulative climbs - actually we have now climbed 6,941 meters in 4 days (22,772 ft). Next stop, summiting Mt Everest.
We started early in South Bristol on the Avon Cycleway and found ourselves crossing the Avon with the tide out, leaving an empty river. Unfortunately the NCN near the bridge was closed, with minimal signage, making us backtrack on ourselves for miles, to get to the Avon river bridge.
New Bridge (M4)
Old Bridge (M48)
Day 3 saw us ride 89 miles and as has already been said in a previous blog, saw us climbing 5886ft.
Day 4 will see us doing about the same distance, but with hopefully less than half the climb of the previous day.
Did someone say chocolate? The intrepid duo stopped off to visit the Chocolate factory, whilst we made our way to Land's End on day 1.
When they arrived at Land's End, on their way to have their picture taken at the "Land's End signpost", Moose and Mouse were distracted by Paddington Bear ... and shared a marmalade sandwich instead. They never did get to have their official photo taken 😁.
Yesterday we were holding our collective breaths for what today's trip to Bristol would bring. The day lived up to expectations. For all of us except our old friend and "Sherpa", Almero, it was the first time that Michael, Arlene and I had ridden up a hill with a incline approaching 17 degrees. In short, some might say that that is the reason that one drives something with an engine!
Today's 1811m of climb takes us to a total of 5481m of elevation climbed in three days...four times the height of Ben Nevis.
The flip side of this is that it is also possible for some of us to do in excess of 60km/hour on a downhill.
We also got to meet and follow the some cows taking a walk down the lane and to have coffee and ice cold Coke at a working sawmill. All in a day's work.
A massive thanks to Almero for the expert sherpa-ing over the past two days. It was quite a ride!
Day 2 was a day of many highs...all made possible by covering 148 km that climbed 2593m (or 8507 feet) in just under 10 hours. With that much climbing one gets to see the hills of Cornwall early in the morning,
to ride over deep gorges a few hundred feet below and then be ensconced in the tranquil tree-lined cycle path of the Granite Way in Devon,
and be rewarded with pints of ice-cold Coca Cola at Strawberry Fields Farm in 27 degree heat at 4pm in the afternoon.
What a day! We were definitely holding our breath a bit for what the next day's trip from Okehampton to Bristol would bring!
The first leg from Lizard Point to Land's End was 34 miles.
From Land's End we headed out a further 20 or so miles to provide us with a great springboard for the ride to Okehampton. The red star shows where we stopped at the end of Day 1 and marks the starting point for Day 2.
