17 October 2025 (cloudy and cool) 70km

Ju here. Sometimes I just can't sleep and last night was one of those nights. After finishing dinner last night, we came up to our room and while I edited and posted the blog from the previous two days, Pete wrote the day's blog. By the time we'd done that it was 11pm but I still didn't feel tired for some weird reason. 

I lay there trying to sleep and last checked the time at midnight. I was awake again at 3.50am and sleep has eluded me ever since. It's now 5.20am and I've given up.

Sometimes you see so much in a day, it's hard for my brain to process it all. Yesterday was a very beautiful and mostly peaceful day's riding.

However, the last hour was frantic and fraught with worry about where we were going to sleep and how much it was going to cost us. And whether we were going to be able to stop before dark as the previous night was decidedly dodgy.

Then I'm thinking about how we can make sure we don't end up in the same situation tonight with no certain place to stay. Making sure I enlarge all the maps along the next 70kms of planned riding to make sure there's nothing dodgy about any of the suggested routes so we're not suddenly faced with added kms of backtracking and detouring.

Of course the answer is, there is no such thing as a sure thing and on bike trips (as in life), you have to be able to roll with the punches. Yes, sometimes it is super frustrating, but you just have to learn to accept, adapt and get over it. Over to Pete.

We were both awake at 6.30am and did some stretches. Felt good after two very long and tiring days. My knee has felt a bit stiff with the work we've been putting in, after our two week lay-off on the Wirral. But it did feel better after stretching.

Downstairs, we wandered into the restaurant and were delighted to find a full buffet laid out before us.

Not my usual ravenous self this morning and was happy with weetbix and some fruit....followed by five pieces of bacon, two sausages, black pudding, tomato, mushrooms, baked beans and a hashbrown, with toast. Everything was cooked to perfection as well so that was a good start to the day.

Had a quick chat with a Hungarian receptionist who was on. She wasn't very complimentary about her home country or the population, which she said were very racist.

Off down the road and it wasn't too long before we missed our first turn, adding an extra 5 kms to our day. So demoralizing and wearing thin now. We are both very tired and this just meant more unnecessary kilometres.

Ju here. You will have noticed how happy Pete has been cycling through his motherland and this in his eyes has been the best cycling of the trip. So you'd think he'd be grateful that I thoughtfully extended such cycling for him by forgetting that crucial right turn. 

Yes it would have been 5 km shorter, but the road would have undoubtedly been busier and if we wanted to just get from A to B in the shortest time possible, well, we could have just caught a train. Eventually he agreed it wasn't such a bad thing to be on this road, as we thoroughly enjoyed this section and knew there wouldn't be many more like it as we got closer to London. Back to Pete.

The one saving grace was that the scenery was so colourful and beautiful.

Although cool, we were happy to be riding nice roads, without too much traffic.

Even though I don't have a religious bone in my body, the countryside photographs always make me think of the hymn "Jerusalem" and makes me feel very nostalgic. There was a lot of that going on today.

Finally into Bicester, (the beautiful, but roundabout way).

One thing we both noticed here, was the amount of people in wheelchairs. It was very strange, so if anyone knows anything, please let us know.

Riding on, we passed by not one prison, but two. Bullington and Piddlington. We wondered if there was a lot of piddling from the bulls round here to inspire such names.

Onwards to Brill, where we climbed another hill, to find a windmill, but the blades stood still.

(Having recently passed through the land of Shakespeare, we have been inspired to make bigger efforts with our writing. Hope you appreciate the effort). 

Joined the B4011 which was a lot busier and this took us to Thame where we shopped at a Waitrose supermarket, for lunch, which we ate on a bench, in a small garden area.

Had another cycle tourer from years ago stop and chat before moving on to Chinoor and then cycling up a big climb to Bledlow Ridge.

This really had us working, but plodding away, eventually saw us at the top and once again enjoying the views, this time from up high.

The autumn colours are looking sensational at the moment.

Lots and lots of kites (type of bird) enjoying the updrafts from the top of the ridge.

Scenes from West Wycombe (above).

At 4pm we reached High Wycombe.

Ju here. After this we reached a busy roundabout but had a small road mapped out for the last section into High Wycombe. We arrived at the duly appointed spot to find this. 

Impossible to get our bikes through this "kissing gate" and that is the end of the track right there. How that made it onto a road bike route, I have no idea. But you can see why I was constantly checking that I didn't have Mapy set to "walking tracks" over the past few days. Back to Pete.

Found the Travel Lodge, at a busy intersection and went in what seemed to be the back way. This area had a number of dodgy looking people looking around, but once ensconced, after shopping for dinner and breakfast, we settled into our room for the night with a can of soup to share. After eating so much rich food lately, it was just what the doctor ordered.

Have to say the Travel Lodge have been our pick so far and reasonable.

Tomorrow is our final day of cycling on tour.

We will ride the 33 kms to Heathrow and our final hotel (Renaissance) for two nights.

Before 2pm (hopefully) we will pick up our bikes boxes and strip the bikes down.

Until tomorrow's blog we will sign off, as we are both very sleepy, especially Julia after minimal sleep last night.