Day 3 - Nanstellen to Holsworthy

Day 3  - Nanstellen to Holsworthy.

At this great home stay in the forest for our included breakfast we have - cheese, yogurt, croissants, toast, jam, banana, tea, and coffee. What a treat. What a different universe from yesterday.

This is a really sweet place to stay.

 Down the hill we go as we leave and then  we take a wrong turn into the little town of Nanstellen itsef. There's a small ancient church.

 We have already seen many  small ancient churches  in Cornwall.  Typically for many centuries, life for people here has surely been work and family. And the overarching church provided a framework for life, a  guide, a hope for the future,  contact with something bigger and deeper than daily life. Now for most,  the church is gone. How are those spiritual needs now meet for people.


We reverse track and find the right turning. We turn right, back onto the Camel trail that we had cycled on from Padstow the previous evening. The old railway line ascends slowly but surely uphill beside a classic english river shaded in typically english forest.  We seem to just zoom uphill.


Suddenly the trail is finished. It is a 200 metre steep road climb to Churchtown. There are very nice views from the ascending road and this village over the forests and farmland with the great patchwork of paddocks of Cornwall  and out to the sea in the west.  We are riding onto Bodmin Moor. This is our first moor on the ride. We have noticed so far that there are fresh route markers, (as on the post in this photo)

 there are old and faded route markers
 and there are sometimes white painted marker signs on the road to indicate our route.  

As we leave Churchtown  we can't find a route marker of the modern variety. However there is an older one for National Cycleway 3 so we followed that.  At the moment we are supposed to be on Cycleway 3. 20 minutes later and no more markers I use the phone and google maps to find we are quite off course. We find our way back soon enough.

Now we cycling across the high moorland on tiny roads hardly a car width wide  with the  impressive Rough Tor hill on our right.  

We come to what was an airfield field during World War 2 used  for spotting U boats. In  another 5 km our guide gives us a  choice of easy or hard routes to Bude. We choose the harder and more interesting route.  We will never come this way again so better do it.  We gradually descend from the moor towards the coast.  Suddenly we have a 30% slope dropping 100 metres to the sea.

And then its mirror 150 meters climb at 30% angle up the other side. Lots of work.  Further on, less extreme ups and downs  take us on to Bude, a pretty and busy seaside town. We look for the bike shop to fix Zita’s problematic gears. It is listed in the guide and on Google Maps.  But it has disappeared from reality.  What a pain.


 We ride on to a cafe for cake and tea. Now we have about 200 metre of climb for our evening stay at Holsworthy. We are finding accommodation at a reasonable price very scarce. Our destination for each evening is partly determined by where we can find somewhere to stay for a reasonable price.  Tonight it's in the White Hart hotel.  Very old and simple. Over 400 years old.  But for 40 pounds it is good value. We have jacket potatoes for dinner at another pub. Its food has better reviews but accommodation is more costly.

Zitas gears have continued to play up. We have contacted Peter from Lands End Cycles. Tomorrow he  will bring us a new bike in his van to swap with Zita's bike. 100 miles each way driving for him! Hopefully the new bike will be more reliable. We still have a lot more cycling to do.


It is starting to spit as we walk back to our hotel after dinner. We have noticed – the rain around here comes slowly but relentlessly. It starts to spit and then slowly, over hours,  gets heavier. But it might take 12 hours to really set in.