Running to Stand Still

After 2 whole rest days, it was a tad more tricky than usual to get ourselves up at the crack of dawn, and climb onto the bikes; especially to pedal out of a truly stunning place like Charleston. Still, it was one of those glorious days that we used to marvel at when we lived in New York: bright, crisp…and absolutely freezing!

Today, it was a relatively straightforward 63-mile ride West South West to a place called Point South, a stop off on our way to Savannah, Georgia. Or it would have been straightforward were it not for the 10-20 mph head wind buffeting us all the way there (well, mainly Anthony, who took the brunt of the wind for the vast majority of it as Kat, the crafty draftee, tagged along behind), which made it feel at times like we were pedalling on spinning bikes in the gym rather than making any headway… and, of course the antics of the Gamines, who were worse than useless today (yawn, sounds familiar). Yes, although there was a Federal Highway all the way from Charleston to Point South, we had tried to mix it up a bit by choosing some roads alongside the highway to give us a bit of respite and get us away from the traffic. Unfortunately, we started to find that some of these so-called “roads” were actually half-made up sand tracks. Naturally, we didn’t find that out until we were already some way down the first one…we were particularly glad at that point to be on our touring bikes rather than the racers that we left back in the UK.

So, sticking to the highway for the rest of the way (Gamines, tail-spin, heard it before), it was a bit of a slog. Still, the scenery got better and better as the day wore on, including vast areas of wetlands with herons, and probably all manner of other beautiful birds that we were travelling too fast to spot. We did manage to snap one shot when we found a wide enough shoulder to stop on. Talking of shoulders, rather like the appellation controlee that we have been applying to road surface throughout our trip (today was fairly Vin de Table), we are thinking of starting a scale for shoulder width, based on our “Moss scale” (that’s Kate Moss in her waif-era, for those who missed our blog on that from a few days ago). Today would have been a Victoria Beckham.

Tomorrow we will set off bright and early, bound for Savannah, praying for Grand Cru Classe, Caster Semenya, and a tail wind…

Us x