Friday 22nd July 2022, 128.59km, 679m

It’s not all sunshine and country lanes riding LEJOG. Some days it rains all day, the country lanes are lined with gravel, the drivers are more aggressive and you’re glad to get to the hotel. Today was that day.

It wasn’t all bad news though, the rain was persistent but never torrential, we had a tail wind of sorts and our time on main roads was limited.

Despite being the flattest day of the ride I felt that my legs were heavy but that could also be because I was one of the last to start and then paced Olivia and John to Martin, Jasmine and Vicky who were some way up the road from us.

Surreal moment of the day was Olivia photographing my beans on toast lunch as she’d never seen it before.

It wasn’t much of a day for taking pictures and although we rode through Delamere Forest I was just counting down the kilometres until we’d get to the hotel.

The hotel were very accommodating, even going so far as to set up a hose for us to clean our bikes. My Wilier has never been that filthy and I’m massively grateful to have a clean bike to start tomorrow with.

The hotel is at Leigh Sports Village and tonight is the quarter final of the Women’s Euros between Sweden and Belgium. There are a lot of Swedish fans around and the location for dinner, the local pub, was packed when we arrived and pretty much empty at 8pm when the match kicked off.