Day 4: Cherry Hill, NJ to Carneys Point, NJ.

Another light day today. 35 miles. Not intentionally, just the start of the day took ages.

Getting out of Cherry Hill, combined with finding a place that sold batteries, took a fair while. It’s funny really when you have everything you need strapped to your bike, it becomes something that you don’t want to leave if you can’t see it. Even if you lock it up, it’s still a potentially easy target so selecting where you stop is quite important. I.e. somewhere with a big window out front, railings etc.

After the faff of leaving Cherry Hill, and passing on the outskirts of Camden, I had a bad feeling today might be a look-out-for-traffic-urban-day. But it turned out great a couple of hours later.

I ended up on an awesome road called Kings Highway / New Jersey Route 41, through Clarksboro (Gloucester County). Wow. By this point it was magic hour, and the weather as good as it gets – the sun was dropping and the light was brilliant. The autumn colours and low sun turning everything purple was pretty striking. The houses immense and classic – something like you’d see in The Addams Family. The fields vast and sparse. Probably one of the biggest reasons today wasn’t very mile-heavy was the constant stopping to take photos.

Click the image below to open the full panoramic:

It was awesome to watch a group of about 10 deer jump out of some woods and run across an adjacent field.

Today was also the first time the roads have been suitable for listening to music and audiobooks which is something I’ve been looking forward to. Really makes it easier to pedal for longer stints and increases motivation. Album of the day was Passenger – All The Little Lights. Check it out.

Barked at a few times today (by dogs, not people). Made me think of the stories of people on tour being chased / attacked by dogs. If you’ve done anything similar and have any tricks in managing dog attacks, it’d be great to hear in the comments below. Any states coming up that it’d be worth getting spray for? What’s your avoidance strategy?

Got ‘in the zone’ for the first time, maybe it was the amazing scenery and the cals from last nights dinner, or perhaps it was just getting in to the swing of things, but the cycling was totally enjoyable, the pain non-existent, and there was a strong wish for the light to remain. It was ace. A full day of that would be incredible. This distance-cycling thing’s something special, huh?!

As for the bike and gear, it’s all going pretty well really. Bike’s running smoothly. Still no punctures which is surprising considering the amount of glass in the shoulders over the last couple of days. Saddle pain, after yesterdays light day, was much improved, ready for a full day’s push in the morning. Gotta be due a stint of bad weather soon surely? Seems too good to be true for the last few days.

Ended up in Carneys Point, which is the town on the Delaware River which means tomorrow will be a new state – Delaware, and Maryland in a couple of days. Didn’t ever plan on going down that strip of land but it’s had a lot of recommendations so have adjusted the route a little bit. It was always a Vague Direction anyway. Looking forward to finally joining the ACA route in Virginia most likely.

Kept the main camera in the bag today but was snapping away on the iPhone. Here’s a few snaps that mainly involve a lot of sky.