Day 5

Ludlow to Chester - 85 miles
A day of high drama. The wettest day so far - showers on and off all day - but it'll take more than that to dampen our spirits. All went smoothly for the first 30 miles. We met up with another goup of Lejoggers complete with paniers loaded with gear so we shouldn't gloat that we overtook them. Just as we topped the biggest hill of the day a catastrophy occured as Anne's gear cable snapped. We managed to limp to our first checkpoint by combination of freewheeling downhill and Mandy towing Anne uphill. After a lot of head scratching and prodding of the bike we realised that we were out of our depth and 'emergency support procedure' had to be deployed. Margaret whisked Anne off to Halfords in Shrewsbury and the remaining four pressed on with Jenny promoted to head support-driver. Never let a bad word be spoken about Halfords - an hour and a half later Anne was back complete with repaired bike and racing to catch up the others, spurred on by the fear that she would miss out on Joey's chocolate-orange cake if she dawdled. Sharon and Moira met us briefly at the roadside and this evening Joey, Jacs and baby Frankie (resplendent in his Lejog Groupie T-shirt) also came to visit. We continue to be touched by the support and kindness of the people that we meet en route. Today was no exception and special thanks goes to the landlady of the Mytton Arms in Habberley who not only let us use her phone and supplied us with gallons of tea but also gave us lunch at a discount price and donated a further £20 to the cause.