Day 2 – Heading To Bath

51°23'16.1"N 2°23'38.5"W

2017/06 - A Return to England with Mom
12 June 2017 in Some Infidelity, United Kingdom

After a spectacular weekend with friends, we are back on the road once again. Today, we head from Shrewsbury to Bath. We have essentially chunked up our trip, with three nights of visits, three nights flitting about and three more nights of visits. So the next three days have us hotel hopping, as we check out the southern coast of England (which neither of us are terribly familiar with it).

First, however, we have to GET to the southern end of England.

Easier said than done, as there is a large inlet (and I’m sure I just horrified numerous British people with that description, as we are talking about the monstrously large Bristol Channel) that separates Wales to the north and Cornwall in the south, and aptly ends near Bristol. As with most bodies of water, the challenge is getting across it. So Bath (ancient site of Roman baths, in case you were wondering) becomes a reasonable staging place.

Knighton in Wales. Our first stop of the day for coffee.

That makes today’s ride an eminently civilized 230 kms or so. While in theoretical terms you might do that in a couple of hours, however, in the UK you can reasonably expect that to take all day. Particularly given that we are taking ‘B’ roads for most of the trip (all of which are delightfully meandering, and some of which are surprisingly narrow. Specifically, single-car-width narrow, with tall hedgerows either side). So, despite our highways and by-ways of choice being officially subject to the “national speed limit” (that would be 60 miles per hour), actual rate of progress is somewhat slower.

Progress was particularly slow today because my GPS has apparently lost its mind. On the way up, every time I did something that was unexpected (this involved something as simple as leaving the hotel driveway) it recalculated the route. That meant that the route that I carefully programmed via my computer was rapidly revised as soon as I was on the road.

In Hay-on-Wye, this dog was doing a great job of blocking the shop entrance.

My strategy was therefore to built in waypoints all along my chosen route, so that even when the GPS recalculated, it would keep on following my chosen roads (at least, this was the theory). In actual practice, the GPS apparently isn’t happy until I’m EXACTLY RIGHT ON TOP of where I’m supposed to be. So if I don’t reach a waypoint to its satisfaction, it keeps trying to get me to turn around until I do.

As you an imagine, this behaviour is less than pleasing to me. Before I figured out what was going on (and ultimately stopped it from navigating for me), I had made three u-turns, and stopped several times at the side of the road to figure out just what the hell it thought I was supposed to be doing. Out of frustration, I tried to commit the intended route (at least until our lunch stop) to memory. I got it part right, and once I was far enough in the back and beyond, I set the destination for our lunch spot and let it guide me there.

The bookstore we hoped to have lunch in.

This became a slight variation of the rest of my day’s navigation. I would figure out the roads that I needed to take—at least for the majority of a navigational leg—and then tell it my destination for that leg. This had the benefit of (mostly) letting me take the roads that I wanted to, while still ultimately getting to where I had intended to.

Amazingly, this was not the worst GPS adventure I’ve had (I don’t think Dianne will EVER let me forget “The Nightmare on Loon Lake Road”) but it ranks up there amongst the more annoying. I’m not entirely sure what the solution for this is going to be. The biggest problem is that, from the perspective of the GPS, the roads we are taking are in its considered opinion un-navigable, and it can get us to our destination faster even by going miles out of our way on an A road (I’ve already banned it from motorways). Given that the next three days of riding has a lot of specific “let’s take this road; it looks interesting!” built into the planned route, this is going to take some work to sort out.

Tintern Abbey. A bit of a fixer-upper.

Despite the challenges, we made it to our destination (and mostly followed the route I expected we would). There were a few noteworthy changes to our travel, mostly because once you are dealing with the road less travelled, the actual signage is abysmal. I missed one turn this afternoon that had me veering back in a direction I didn’t want to go on. Correcting this resulted in an epic re-orientation over a hillside into the next valley, along what was without question the narrowest road we travelled all day.

After Tintern (home to an abbey that has fallen into disrepair and would likely be described as a ‘modest fixer upper’ on Home & Garden TV), the last half-hour was motorways, bridges and rush hour traffic to get to our hotel. Including a pretty intense crosswind as we crossed the Severn River (the pointy end of the Bristol Channel). The consolation for this was that our hotel is a delightful little boutique (Apsley House, just outside of Bath proper) with amazing views, awesome rooms and miniature teddy bears. We arrived in time to relax for a bit (tea for mom, G&T for me) before heading out to dinner.

The bear that was waiting in my hotel room.

Dinner was at a local gastro-pub, the Locksbrook Inn. It was walking distance from our hotel, was recommended by them, and had a pretty casual menu. It was a great meal, and a great opportunity to get some fresh air (not that we’ve been inside all day) and some exercise. And early night for both of us, and it’s off to Cornwall tomorrow.

awesome roads, B roads, baffling GPS directions, failing to navigate, frustration, GPS accuracy