79 miles ridden – 4984 feet climbed.

Unusually the weather forecast was bang on today and we deliberately walked out of a nice, dry hotel, climbed onto our bikes and rode off into the rain. Why? Because that’s what we do – cycle. It only rained for about 20 minutes and it was quite warm so it wasn’t uncomfortable and to be frank as we were steadily climbing for most of the first 22 miles we were going to get wet anyway from sweating – only a handful of people bothered with waterproof jackets.

Our last few miles in New York state were fairly uneventful although we did cross the Hudson River. In 1984 Sue, Simon, and his girlfriend at the time (I can’t remember her name) passed under that very bridge as we travelled by boat down from Burlington in Vermont to Haverstraw on the New York/New Jersey border. I would have never believed that 32 years later I wouldn’t be able to remember her name.

We came across a fairly decent attempt at an authentic English pub:

It has to be said that while Vermont is very pretty the roads (so far) are the worst we have come across to date. There is often no shoulder for us to ride on and where there is it’s either full of debris or the surface is disintegrating added to which, given the roads are relatively (for the US) narrow the cars are zipping by quite close. 

Soon after the state line we started our first climb of the day which was about 2000 feet. It wasn’t particularly steep, just long so once we had our rhythm it was a case of don’t look up, just keep going. Having reached the summit I started thinking that in some ways I wouldn’t mind doing the first leg through Oregon again with the benefit of the fitness and experience I now have as I think I could do it so much better now. After the summit we had a long downhill into the town of Wilmington. The town and the area as a whole are quite pretty.

Then we started the next climb. This was much gentler than the first but the road condition deteriorated significantly so we had to carefully weave our way along the edge of the road making sure we didn’t encroach too much on the carriageway itself as there were a lot of cars. The reward at the top of Hogback Mountain was a fabulous view of four states: Vermont, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire 

We also got to sit in a very large Adirondack style chair – as we had been sweating our way up, and it had been raining earlier, and we had between us our usual cocktail of Sudocream, Butt Balm, Bengay, and Voltarol, we left a rather unappealing patch on the chair for the kids that were getting on next:

As we came into Brattleboro we were able to visit their old covered bridge. It was in use until quite recently and really has a unique charm about it.

Tomorrow is our last full day and we will ride to Manchester in New Hampshire. We had a sobering reminder today of how careful we have to be as two of our riders came off their bikes in a tunnel as we were leaving the Albany area. Not their fault, the road surface was poor and the tunnel not properly lit, they were fortunately not hurt but it is a reminder that we have to remain vigilant right up until we dip our front wheels in the Atlantic.

We have less than 140 miles left to cycle – 3500 miles lie behind us captured in 1000s of photos and a million memories.

It is, and has been, absolute magic.