(picture is random shop front in Fredericksburg)

Date: 26 April 2011
Woke up in: Woodbridge, Virginia
Fell asleep in: Guinea, Virginia (near Fredericksburg)
Miles ridden today: 47.5
Total miles ridden so far: 375.5
Weather: Hot and sunny. And really bloody windy.

I couldn’t write my blog yesterday, due to a scary contact lens solution spill over my iPhone. Still, disaster appears to have been averted, so I’m back to update you on the cycling adventures of the day…

We got into serious civil war territory, cycling through the pretty town of Fredericksburg and the nearby Fredericksburg Spotsylvania (what a great place name. I’d like to move there just so I could have Spotsylvania as part of my address) National Military Park. According to the park’s website – http://www.nps.gov/frsp/index.htm – the now rather beautiful and tranquil park is the bloodiest landscape in North America, with 15,000 people having died there and another 85,000 injured. Very difficult to imagine when you’re cycling along a sun dappled road surrounded by beautiful trees.

After yet another day of hills, I’m also very grateful to the nice man in the Bike Works cycle store in Fredericksburg (http://www.bikeworks.us), who reworked the last 15 miles of our cycle ride to avoid both a recent road closure and yet another bloody great big hill. He won my newly inaugurated ‘nice person of the day’ award.

We finished off the day with our second camping experience of the trip (about to become our habitual form of accommodation – there seem to be lots more of them in the south). We only arrived about an hour before it got dark, so Will ended up cooking with his bike torch clamped between his teeth, but it was a vastly different experience from when we camped last week; no rain and too hot for the sleeping bags. Think we’d better get some AC for the tent when we get to Florida!