Charlottesville

I had quite a good night's sleep last night in the grounds of the fire station with a comfy enough tent and a full belly. My sleep was interrupted every few hours though by a number of freight trains which rattles through a couple of hundred metres from my tent, hooting/blaring/beeping their horns all the way through - imagine the combined sound of ten car horns!

I was up at half five though and after a quick shower in the fire station I put my tent away and hit the road with a box of raisins and a Snickers for brekkie.

It was about 65 miles to Charlottesville according to the map but I traded routes for one five miles shorter but with more hills.

I made good time for the first 40 miles listening to a backlog of podcasts of 'Start The Week' from Radio 4 and then the sun kicked in.
At 26 degrees the sunscreen on my legs felt useless whilst my arms were shielded by a long sleeve top which did my temperature no favours!

The last 15 miles were punctuated by rollercoaster type hills which are a nightmare on a bike as you can't let rip too fast on the downhill stretches for fear of potholes and so you have a speed deficit going up the other side.

Anyhow, I made it into Charlottesville by lunchtime and grabbed a healthy snack at Wendys before finding hotel for a good kip before the mountains start tomorrow.

Two quick housekeeping points - firstly sorry for the limited photos but due to a desire to carry less stuff I am just using my Iphone rather than a PC so can't upload snaps from my camera until I get to a proper computer. Also you may see that the blog is really badly formatted and this is also due to the medium rather than my poor aesthetics.

Since I am hitting the Appalachians tomorrow, signal could be crappy so there could be a couple of days' hiatus on the blog.