Today was the longest and most difficult day of the cycle so far. We started by heading to Redditch and while there we missed our turning and ended up having to hotfoot it over a dual carriageway to get back on the right track.
Once through Redditch we entered Birmingham and headed towards Walsall. After a few more wrong turns, double checking of our maps and avoiding the awful drivers of Smethwick we got to the other side of Walsall and headed out of the city, towards Stafford on the A34.
We used the relatively clear roads to get to Stafford as quickly as possible and cruised through the town far easier than we got through the city of Birmingham. At the other side of Stone we headed towards Stoke on some minor roads. When stopping for a toilet break we met a fellow cyclist who claimed to have done LEJOG three times previously, the first being when he was 15! The random chap gave us some money for our charities and then we headed in our separate ways.
Stoke was our next destination and our route through the city seemed to take us completely up hill. While watching some old woman waiving her arms around I managed to clip John’s back wheel, a manoeuvre which caused me to be launched off of my bicycle. Luckily nobody was harmed and we carried on a few seconds later.
The final part of the day saw us head up to Congleton on the A527. The 85 miles took us just over 8 hours and despite the fine weather the difficulty of navigating through busy cities made the day a pretty tiring one. Tomorrow we do it all again, when we head through Manchester.
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