Day 7

Hayle to Lands End and then Helston
Today: 76.5km and 910m ascent.
Start: 1040am, End: 750pm
Overall: 733km and 10,470m ascent.
N.B. Daily stats here are as shown in Strava below. Overall stats are using my Garmin watch, which is the only device that's successfully recorded the whole route. 

Below, I've gone out of order for once, because the first image in the blog becomes the cover image for it...

Lands End
Just the one photo from there. Or should I say just THE one photo from there.

I didn't care how much the cost would be - I was getting this photo taken. As it turns out, it's free if you're doing a charity fundraiser🙂 The two staff there were very helpful - they even had to mark some dashes on the back of some of their other letters to make the "stus-ride-4-bpm" work! As you can see, "4" instead of "four" meant it just fitted into their sign.

Setting the Scene
Back to the start of the day.
Thursday was gloriously sunny...and very windy! By hacking around, I've managed to put together this image, which shows the 10 day wind direction forecast starting first thing on Thursday morning.
The two points of interest (or should that be concern!) are that, for Thursday and Friday, the big blue arrows are indicating an easterly wind, whilst the graph shows that the wind speed is faster on those two days than for any of the other eight. My observation is that this forecast was right - it was VERY windy!

So my ride south west from Hayle to Lands End was largely downwind, whilst the ride north east, and at times due east, to Helston was largely into a strong wind. 

Hayle to Lands End
First, here's what powered me down to Lands End.
This was in the M+S cafe in Hayle. The item on the left was shown on the menu as "Gluten free bacon". I'd never thought otherwise! It turns out that the bun surrounding the bacon is gluten-free as well.

Whilst I'm eating this, I decided to skip visiting St. Ives, which is a shame as I know it's a nice place to visit. However, that change of plan cuts an hour off the ride to Lands End, and I suspect I'll need that time to get back to Helston, after passing through it to visit Lizard Point, the southerly most point of the  British mainland. 

Eventually I get on my way at 1040am.

1140am. The other thing about my change of plan is that it means I will be travelling both ways along the same (south) coastal route. Here's my first view of the sea, taken near Long Rock, with Penzance further down the coast.

1155am. Penzance train station - if the station signs werent overexposed you'd have known that anyway. When heading back to Exeter, I've caught many a train over the years whose final destination was Penzance, which is the end of the line for trains...but not cycles.

Next stop for this cycle - Lands End. I arrived there at 130pm and left at 230pm.

Lands End to Helston
Google suggests this 40km ride should take me 2 hours 20 minutes. With my loaded bike that's more like 2 hours 45 minutes. Turns out with a loaded bike into a very strong headwind it took almost double that - 5 hours 20 minutes! I'm just glad I was feeling well and operating at full power - otherwise that wind might have broken me.

435pm. Picture taken from the very southern end of the bay. St. Michael's Mount is just about visible at the far end of the bay, about a third of the image in from the left.

545pm. And now at the other end of the bay, a close up of St. Michael's Mount. As the tide is low, there are people crossing over to it on the walkway.  
Seventy minutes had elapsed between the previous photo and this one being taken. Four flat kilometres separated them too! I spent most of my time in bottom gear with Google telling me I was travelling at a moderate to brisk walking pace! Effectively the wind had turned this flat section into a re-enactment effort wise of cycling up Porlock Hill - the longest and highest climb of the whole route!

So I eventually arrived in Helston at 745pm. At the start of the day I'd planned to be doing that after having also "popped down" to the Lizard and back. As if I needed reminding, it just showed me the power of the weather!

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