Screw your courage to the sticking place.....

I can still remember how clever i thought an old school friends parents were when they wished her luck in her O'Levels with a quote from Macbeth....

Macbeth -              If we should fail?

Lady Macbeth -     We fail?
                              But screw your courage to the sticking place,
                              And we'll not fail.

I have spent the day today metaphorically 'screwing my courage to the sticking place' ... I'm now in Penzance with Mum - staying in a charming hotel  and as we haven't seen a flat stretch of road since Somerset the reality of 'Cornwall and Devon are the hardest bit' has well and truly sunk in!  I'm not kidding - i can now see that the first 4 days will be spent either grinding up hills or free-wheeling down them... none of the lovely speedy pedalling along in the sunshine! 

But it is beautiful here... oh so beautiful .... we stopped for a coffee in Launceston a sweet little town with a stunning church and a hilarious attitude to parking restrictions. It would appear that the cornish way is to stop wherever you like and let everyone else deal with the consequences which generally meant mounting the pavements and scraping along the walls...  and then we had a tootle around St Ives before landing in Penzance....  Tomorrow i shall meet the rest of the gang, be-reunited with Bradley and on Sunday we shall head off from Lands End.....  when the day's ride shall look like this .... 

Which whilst hilly doesn't look too awful .... on Monday however we shall start at sea level and fairly quickly (??? well.....)  be up at the highest village in Cornwall on the edge of Bodmin Moor... but for now ... one day at a time and i'm heading towards possibly the most beautiful bed i've slept in for a while.... G'night x