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within themselves and more important, on schedule. We exchanged
pleasantries and went our own ways.

We had accommodation booked at St.Ives on Thursday evening 11th August, in
a quaint CTC place. Good food, plenty of it, comfortable clean beds but very
loud seagulls. One night was enough to convince us not to spend a fortnight
by the sea. After our evening meal we decided to ‘hit the town’ . I never
imagined that so many people could be crammed into such a small area – we
didn’t get into the town until 9ish – it was worse than Trafalgar Square on
New Years Eve. Abandoning the idea of seeing anything pleasing we returned
to our digs. At 7.30 am on Friday the town was as different again, with an
army of street cleaners busy tidying away the tons of burger boxes and fish
and chip papers. They must have been working since 6 am because the town
was virtually clear of all rubbish. This time it looked good. The picture
postcard harbour with bobbing boats, some harbouring seagulls sleeping on
the tarpaulins (after all, they had been up all night !). Piles of fishing nets
still wet from the night’s work lay strewn around to dry out, some fishermen
were still at work with rod and line, probably hoping to catch some lunch from
the quayside. Wandering through the narrow streets you could imagine that
it was once a sleepy fishing village, but now sadly a changed economy had
taken its toll – the residents paying dearly for tourism.

After breakfast on Friday we made our way to Lands End along the coastal
road. Unless you are willing to pay £1.50 each (probably a lot more now),
Lands End proper cannot be reached – so we settled for a ¼ mile short to
commence our marathon. Tony was well fed and watered as he pushed off
along the A.30 to Penzance, Redruth, Bodmin and Launceton, this first 84
miles taking 4¼ hours. This journey was really unpleasant, the road being
just 2 car width, I wanted to stay behind in case of trouble but that meant
unless I wanted a string of cars behind me getting more and more agitated
travelling at 18 mph it was almost impossible. I literally stopped at every
layby, either to let cars go or to feed Tony. The sun beat down all day,
however as Tony was riding in a NE direction all day the back and one side of
one leg got quite sun burnt, we could

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