Once more on to the gravel........

What could possibly go wrong?  Quite a lot as it turned out, not helped by the tremendous heat (around 90 deg F by 1.00pm). First of all, about 20 yards from the hotel. we discovered that bicycles do not trigger traffic lights, even at major junctions with 50 cars queued behind you in the rush hour! After two cycles through the sequence with no green light the natives were getting restive behind us, so we managed to shuffle over into the right turn only lane and let the Sheriffs car behind us get up to the grid. This happened several more times and on 2 occasions no car turned up so we had to try and cross the junction on a red light - not recommended!

We eventually threaded our way out of Roanoke on back roads and hit US11, which we were due to follow for about 18 miles. Although by no means a busy road, it is still a major highway and we were lured into turning right on a bike route, which dropped us back to where we had been heading using a deserted side road, crossing back and forth over the also deserted railroad. After a cold drink stop at 26 miles we planned to head up a back road along the side of the forest - known as the Blue Grass Trail. It started off well, quiet, shady and scenic, the only traffic being 2 grass mowers going in the opposite direction.  The second one stopped and asked if we going 'all the way through'. We replied that we were to which he said it was 'pretty rough'.  We just thought that since the Yanks are obsessed with 'smooth black-top' he meant it was like a typical UK back road - not so. After about 3 miles we reached a sign saying that the road was not recommended for motor vehicles between Nov and April. Even the rubbish road up to the Blue Ridge Parkway didn't say that!!  We went a little further but given we would have to fight our way up 15 miles before reaching surfaced road again we decided to withdraw and live to ride another day.

Next drama came when I started to feel a sharp pain in my back just below the shoulder blades. The pain got worse and started to spread, when I realised that I must have some carnivorous insect trapped in my shirt. It was now excruciating so I didn't stand on ceremony, but stripped off my shirt at the side of the road where Chris managed to remove an enormous orange coloured ant from my back - somewhat unedifying for passing motorists, but a great relief to me!  We had our lunch at a small Exxon filling station complete with life size tiger ( which will make sense to older readers) the owner obviously wasn't up to date with marketing strategy.

In the end we did 66 miles with 3,500 ft of ascent, nearly melted and ended up back where we started from on Saturday morning..........Pictures include Chris listening to the tiger explaining his escape plan and our feelings on finding our road was (yet again) unsurfaced. I wish there was some way you could tell from the map but we rode 610 which was perfectly surfaced and then 611 was just a rough dirt track. Tomorrow we are planning to visit Natural Bridge, which I suspect is like Natural Chimneys in terms of being spectacular - but without the jousting!