LEJOG day 8 (Peter)

We were all nonplussed last night when our waitress asked Richard for his name, but asked noone else. All became clear when his steak and kidney pie crust was engraved “Richard”. The things they do to attract attention in Shropshire!

A hilly morning was accompanied by a 20-25 mph wind, gusting to 40 mph, against which we laboured all day. It’s an odd sensation; normally one goes along the flat at around 15 mph on average; today the best we could muster at times was 6 or 7! Gritty stuff.

Coming through Telford we engaged with a group of teeny boppers doing a 100 mile time trial. They'd completed 85 mls of it before we'd completed 10. And they left us for dust as they passed, wearing boy racer helmets, and crouched very low over the handlebars. We decided that we're not ready to turn professional just yet!

Lunch was a lively affair in Jones’s coffee shop in Market Drayton. Soup to die for, and the hostess with a winning smile looked like a younger version of Jancis Robinson. It turned out that she and her other half have a vineyard to the North in which they are experimenting with eight different grape varieties, seven of which we'd never heard of.

The afternoon continued the morning’s hard pounding, but through fine countryside and Nantwich, now very peaceful and devoid of election posters, to the one horse town of Middlewich. Fortunately we’re staying nearby, not in town.

The forecast for day 9 is for marginally less head wind, but for showers…….sometimes we wonder why we’re doing this......but the thought is only fleeting!