13. Day 5. Monday 26th August

Start Point: Beverley 50'

Highest point during the day 80'

End Point: Hull Port 0'

Total climbing 115'

Climbing difficulty factor 14

Distance 16 miles

Cumulative distance 168 miles

After breakfast, we strolled into Beverley and visited The Minster. On a previous trip, we had been on a tour of the roof which was amazing, seeing all the timber used hundreds of years ago to construct the very high roof. Today was just a ground floor visit. I called in the shop and bought a copy of Desiderata - worth reading every so often!

Later, we checked the bike route by car to find it was actually closed requiring a lengthy detour. However, by altering the initial part of the route, it was possible to go a different way (no further) and rejoin the planned route about 5 miles south of Beverley. 

So, at 2:39pm I set off on what I hope will be my shortest bike ride of the next 15 days.

I was soon at the point where I joined my sat nav's purple line on my screen and relaxed again. In just over an hour I arrived at the docks. I thought I was classed as a foot passenger and went to terminal 1 where I was redirected to terminal 2. After check in and passport I was directed down the empty lane 9 and I overheard the woman with the walkie talkie telling the boat crew that she had a bike passenger and should she send me on first. By the time she turned round to tell me, I was starting to pedal. Two things: the ramps to the upper car decks are steep when you're on a bike, and secondly, a car ferry is quite long, especially when the cars were now in a long line behind me as I cycled the full length of the car deck!

I had to tie up my bike (see photo) and then took all my gear up to my cabin which is where I am writing this so I can post it on the blog whilst I still have a UK signal. 

Tomorrow looks like being a great day for cycling. Belgium is very flat, in fact my route follows a riverside cycle path for about 30 miles, so I should make good progress. I've started to worry a bit about my daily mileage once I get near the Alps. I have to average 53 per day, but I'm starting to think a few 60-70 mile days would give me a good cushion later on, when the mountains might reduce me to 20-odd miles on some days.