Barnstaple; Sunday, 28 June, 2009

I had time for breakfast this morning, and then it was time to check out. Normally when I come to Barnstaple it’s to see a friend, and that had been the original plan, but one of his mates from school had booked his stag weekend for the same weekend, so we were going to meet up later in the day.

As the hotel had quite an early checkout time, I had a few hours to kill before we would meet up. I left my bags with the hotel and headed over to the station to hire a bike for a few hours.

Today, Barnstaple is the end of the line for trains from Exeter, but up until the cuts of the 1960’s trains continued on, across what is today the station car park and along the coast through to Bideford and onto Torrington. Whilst the trains may no longer serve the line, the trackbed had been converted into a cycle and walking path which has the great advantage of being pretty level the whole way through, and makes it a perfect detour for a few hours.

I set off from the station, cycled underneath the bypass and then out onto the old railway line. I made it virtually the whole way to Torrington before it was time to turn around and head back to Barnstaple.

Whilst the journey out had been marked with the odd spit and spot of rain the journey back was a little more unpleasant. As far as Bideford it was fine, but as I left Bideford the rain started to come down, not heavily, but just continuously. Added to that the wind got up, and as is the case with these things, it was a head wind, driving the rain into my face and slowing my progress down quite a bit.

By the time I got back to Barnstaple I was a little damp, and was absolutely knackered. I had also been on quite a hard saddle, so I had a bit of a sore behind. I walked, slowly into Barnstaple to meet up with my friend for a few hours before it was time to catch the train back home.

On arriving at Exeter the previous Paddington train still hadn’t arrived, it was already over 10 minutes late, and my train was already 30 minutes late. Given that it wasn’t originally due into London until gone Midnight this was looking like quite a serious problem. However, when the earlier train arrived the train manager very kindly allowed me to get on his train (even though my ticket was technically only valid on the later train)