86 miles: total 4,214 miles
Bill's phone is on the blink after getting saturated yesterday, and he had no wi-fi at last night's camp site in Abersoch. While he gets himself dried out and sorted out, here's an update courtesy of Big Brother.
The schedule for today was a steady 57 miles from Borth to Penrhyndeudraeth, and I have to wonder whether he chose that stop because a quarry near the town has been turned into a nature reserve because it is populated in summer by nightjars.
Whether that was the case or not, Bill took the decision early in the morning to give himself an advantage for the final three days of his ride by putting in an extra 25 miles in the saddle and to ride on to Abersoch instead.
He was probably thinking that Gwynedd, being full of people who speak Welsh and go to chapel on Sundays, would be dry. How wrong can you be?
No sooner had alternative accommodation been found and booked, and Bill was on his way, than the rain started to come down with a vengeance. You thought those early days in Scotland were wet? Well they had nothing on this Welsh Sunday, which he tells me was by far the wettest day he has endured so far.
Following him on the tracker yesterday afternoon I watched as he powered past the Prisoner village of Portmeirion, and pedalled on beyond Butlin's (or is it now Haven?) holiday camp at Pwllheli. He was possibly too embarrassed to stop there because I'm sure there are some photographs at home of a very young (and possibly almost angelic) little blond child enjoying a holiday there man, many years ago.
The tracker also showed that once he passed Llanbedrog he was riding round in circles for a short while before meeting up with the van, which was parked in a remote field a couple of miles short of Abersoch.
The earlier change of plan meant the new location was not programmed into his trusty sat-nav, and he had to be talked down by Alan and Val who were already parked up. Which is how disaster struck. During all these weeks of playing RainMan he has consistently managed to keep the phone dry. Now, lost in a far corner of Wales, he let water into the works and his keyboard resigned in protest. To cap it all, the field was not equipped with wi-fi - so he was unable to post a blog overnight, and only just managed to get a message to me before he set off again this morning.
He'll have to decide in the next hour or so whether to consolidate the advantage he gained from riding those extra miles yesterday by continuing to Conwy today, or whether he'll need to return to his original schedule and spend the night in Caernarfon while sorting out his technical problems.
One of us (or possibly both) will keep you posted.
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