Plymouth Hoe!

So we made it. We’re on the boat. Perpignan here we come! Although, there were occasions today when neither of us thought we’d make it this far, let alone ride the whole of the length of France. The plan was: drop the car off at the storage place in Plymouth, ride the five miles or so along the river to the town centre, have fish and chips and catch the ferry. We have caught the ferry. We have also had a ride on the lovely Tamar Valley Railway line. And we had Nando’s for tea.

When we left Trowbridge this morning the mood in camp was positive, but tempered slightly by a certain level of apprehension as neither of us has attempted anything quite like this before. We had time to stop for a coffee en route and arrived in Plymouth in good time. We quickly found the storage place where we would be leaving the car while we’re away, but the storage people couldn’t find any evidence of our booking and they had no more room for new bookings. So, we had a car we were leaving in Plymouth for four weeks and we had nowhere to leave it. We started phoning round other storage places, but they were all full. However, we found a place in Tavistock who could accommodate us. (Google is my friend!) Tavistock is a lovely place and the storage place was also wonderful, but Tavistock is not Plymouth. It’s not really very near to Plymouth so, despite our best laid plans, things were looking really tight in terms of time. However, the storage place is not all that far from Gunnislake. I’d never heard of Gunnislake, but the wonderful thing about this place is that it has a railway station on the Tamar Valley Railway. So, we drove the car over to Tavistock, dropped the car off with the storage people and cycled the four miles or so to Gunnislake. 

The station is high above the Tamar valley. It is the end of the line for the Tamar Valley railway and to get to it involves a fairly steep climb from the valley floor. Guided by Google, we turned left after entering the village and dropped down along the valley before turning right into Stony Lane. I hate stony lane. Stony Lane is a narrow, poorly surfaced excuse of a road that climbs back up the side of the valley at a gradient of one in four. With the panniers fully loaded we hauled our bikes up towards the train station, sweating profusely, me finding no grip on the gravelly surface in my cycling shoes, losing my Marks and Spencer’s cargo shorts round my knees, the ones that I discarded on the ferry (yes, those were my shorts under the reclining chair that doesn’t recline, Britanny Ferries!)  only to find that when we finally got to the station the train had gone, that we were only fifty meters up the hill from the point where Google had sent us left (I hate you Google!) and with an hour and a half wait for the next train. 

What do you do in Gunnislake when you have ninety minutes to wait for your train? Nothing. You do nothing. There’s nothing to do. We went to the shop. We read every information panel. Twice. We waited and waited. All the while, aware that there was a ferry in Plymouth that wouldn’t wait for us if we didn’t’t make it on time. However, catching the five twenty nine train gave us ample time to get to Plymouth, have something to eat and catch the ferry. It happened. We caught the train and set off down the valley towards Plymouth. Only three passengers caught the train for  Plymouth and we were two of them. The train made very sedate progress down the valley before stopping at the next station down the line. At least thirty inebriated individuals joined the train here, all middle aged and part of a real ale tour of some kind and very well behaved they were too. All was going well,  we were on track to get to Plymouth to catch the ferry, although we got rather anxious when the train went into reverse. We thought we were heading back to Gunnislake, however unknown to us the driver had forked off.Long and short, we got to Plymouth, caught the ferry and all was well.