Day 3 Exford to Bude

With the pain and the aches setting in from the day before and the knowledge that Exmoor was not over, we decided to look at our original route and find a way to get out of Exmoor as quickly and as flatly as possible. We took some back roads which we were informed by the campsite owner would be a lot less hilly. They were not anywhere near as flat as what we were hoping, and found the beginning of our day going up some very steep hills but after the monster of a hill that we had beaten the previous day we felt that we could handle it. It may have been tough but the route was stunning; we went down hills, through fords, over brooks and along the moor. The view and beauty almost made up for the hills but our legs were very tired. Again we had some great fun coming down off the moor and ended up in some very quaint villages which were a pleasure to go through.

After a little diversion due to a police road block (and having fun with the farmers with our walkie-talkies) we arrived for lunch, after Ben had to quickly pop back up a hill that we had just come down because he left one of the walkie-talkies up there. Doofus! After that we were pretty content in the knowledge that we had left the hills behind us until we received a text from our support team saying that we had a very steep decent with a steep ascent afterwards. It wasn't until we got there and saw the gradient on the signs said 20% that we were worried, all apart from Luke 'The Mentalist' Spencer who threw all caution aside and bombed it, cranking up a very impressive (and stupid) 39.9mph.

After this our day was long, but good, cursing every hill and even cursing the descents with the knowledge that what goes down must go up again. As the time went on, and after a great but crackly phone call to Tim Mars at Stroud FM, we had our support car meet up with us and lead us into the sunset like a beautiful mermaid leading a ship to safety and comfort. We have to say that without our support team we don't know where we would be, actually yes we do: still in Gloucestershire.