Gentle Undulations

"Gentle Undulations" sounds like a band from the 80s. It's also the best way to describe the terrain of southern Virginia. Our ride this morning took us past wheat fields in various stages of growth under a blue sky peppered with fat white clouds. We had no rain today, which was a nice change. We mostly rode on quiet rural roads with tortoises and snakes also making their way across the thoroughfare. We went past places with names lifted from my home country, places like Stonehenge, Isle of Wight, and Scotland. However - given that we went past all these places in the span of a few hours - the settlers decided not to copy the original geography.

Around noon we took a 20-minute ferry ride across the James River to Jamestown. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America and, boy, do people seem to like to visit it. Despite it being a fairly random Wednesday in May the visitors' center had a lot of cars parked outside it and people were making their way to a recreation of the original village. We lingered only long enough to refill our water bottles and added Jamestown to our list of possible places to return to on another trip.

There is an incredible bike trail that takes you all the way from Jamestown to Richmond, which is our destination for tomorrow. The 52-mile trail is freshly paved and has fun wooden bridges over various streams and waterways. Kudos to the state of Virginia for making an awesome bike trail. We met another bike tourer early on the trail. She's headed across the country on a different route to ours but for a few miles the two routes align. We leapfrogged with her for a number of miles and eventually met her again at our stop for the night!

Tonight we're staying at the Willis Methodist Church. They open their doors to touring cyclists and provide camping space outside, a hot shower, cooking facilities and even let you sleep inside, should you desire. It's a popular place, there are 4 other cyclists plus a dog here. That's the most touring cyclists we've seen in one place so far. We've decided to sleep inside, which will spare us both the hassle of setting up the tent and also the chompy teeth of whatever bugs lurk in the woods around here. We've got our choice of two Sunday school rooms or sleeping in the pews. The pews have long cushions (none of that puritanical wood to sit on here) and are quite comfy - I did a test lay-down to help in our decision making - but are a little narrower than our sleeping pads so the final decision is that we'll sleep in what seems to be the Sunday school room for older kids.

Tomorrow we're heading into Richmond to meet up with a friend for a couple of days. We're a little overdue for a rest day at this point so we're looking forward to relaxing!

Growing crops

Tortoise says Hi

From the ferry

At the Jamestown settlement

On the Capital Trail

Mini-library outside a bike shop

Flower bird

Check out those clouds

Pete! Name these cars