The George Hotel at Stamford was quite luxurious and we dined well there. The breakfast room was bright and airy with a massice collection of convex mirrors on the walls.
When we got back to The Beast, that little car that had been parked next to it seemed to have skulked off!
Although my bike seemed to have found a companion.....
As I rode off, Jan stayed in Stamford and had a walk around. She tells me it was very picturesque and worth a visit.
The wind was a lot stronger today and blustery to the extent that I couldn’t always tell which way it was blowing! However, it was generally behind me so as long as I was heading east I was OK. After the first few miles we were into the fens and everything became very flat and open. There were drainage ditches everywhere and the roads all seemed to travel in straight lines. Looking at my OS maps I could see that most of the time I was only two or three metres above sea-level. With the wind behind me I was really flying along and managed a top speed of just over 31 mph on the flat! This meant that I covered the 30 miles to Wisbech in a fraction under two hours and had managed to finish my lunch before Janice joined me. We’d arranged to meet up at a National Trust property called Peckover House in the middle of Wisbech. It’s a really surprising place – from the front it looks like just another imposing house in a whole row of them but behind it there is a marvellous garden, all of which dates back to the 18th century. We didn’t have time to visit the house itself and will have to come back another time.
We had a quick walk around the garden - here I am in the orangery:
and here's Jan underneath a rose arch......
Jan wanted to take a picture of me outside this place for some reason:
As I started riding again I noticed that the wind had shifted round to be more from the south west – this meant that any time my route went too close to being southerly my speed was cut by more than half. As I went along a road called The Smeeth, NCN1 joined my route but then just as I thought I’d follow it for a while rather than my planned route, I came up to another “Road Closed Ahead” sign. If the road that was closed was the bridge over the river, I was going to have to do a BIG detour and would have to ride into the wind. Reverting back to my route, there was no problem and I stopped on the river crossing to take pictures.
Big skies and long flat vistas are the order of the day here. My photos don't capture how windy it was though - I could imagine it being very bleak here during the winter.
This is a river called The Great Ouse, you can see the volume of water it deals with is massive and I crossed two others of a similar size and hundreds of smaller ones, all of which drain into The Wash.
Tonights stop was at Little Abbey Farm in Pentney. It's a very friendly place and we would recommend it to anyone staying in the area.
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