To all those who told us the final part of our journey would be the toughest, I have just one thing to say: you were right. This morning was brutal. Brutal. Devon, your reputation as one half of the JOGLEr’s worst nightmare is fully justified.

The day started out ok, as we continued along the canal path to Tiverton. Nice and flat, we thought; what’s all the fuss about? But it was when we began the climb out of Tiverton that things started to get interesting. As with the Lake District, the warning signs were there in the street names: Longdrag Hill leading into Tombstone Lane. As a metaphor for what was to come it couldn’t be bettered: an uphill battle resulting in the death and subsequent burial of our hopes for an easy day.

It started out as a two-mile slog up out of the town, including some pretty big gradients. Once at the top, it immediately plummeted down again, almost to the level we were at before. If anything, this was worse than the climb: a terrifyingly steep descent that twisted and turned, with the high hedgerows giving you zero visibility of what was coming up next and requiring you to apply the brakes the entire way down. Once at the bottom, it was straight back up again, the steepest gradients of the entire trip. And so it continued. Up then down, up then down, all morning. For hours and hours and hours.

Come lunchtime our knees were in tatters. Lungs were bursting. Tempers would’ve been frayed if we’d had the energy to spare. From swearing at the wind, Bailey was now remonstrating with the road surface. Things were getting ugly.

We needed a little light relief, and it came from an unexpected source. We were on a hilltop, miles from anywhere. We’d mistimed our food stops (again – damn these country pubs and their archaic opening hours). We were running low on energy, and things were getting desperate. All we had was a packet of jelly babies and an old banana that had been in my handlebar bag for the past week. Giving the banana up for dead, I cracked open the jelly babies – a little too zealously, as it happened. The violence with which the bag was ripped open sent the confections flying across the path. Anyone old enough to remember Grange Hill can picture what happened next: Bailey, scrabbling around on the floor for sweets, like a young Zammo frantically trying to hoover up his spilt heroin. Just say no, Bailey, just say no.

The comedy of the moment lightened the mood, cleared our heads and helped us make an executive decision: find some lunch, then find some better roads. After meeting objective number one thanks to a lovely little cafe in North Tawton, we escaped the country lanes and found a B-road that took us all the way into Okehampton. Compared to our torturous progress in the morning, we covered the seven miles in next to no time. From there we hit the Granite Way, a cycle path following the old railway out of Okehampton – our first bit of flat riding since the canal first thing – and from there we jumped on the old A30 at Sourton, a lovely bit of road that was pretty deserted. It was still fairly hilly, but both the climbs and descents were long and steady, meaning we finally got some free-wheeling reward out of all our uphill effort!

The day wasn’t quite done with us yet though – all that heavy braking earlier had destroyed Bailey’s brake pads, so before we could find a hotel for the night we had to replace those via some quick roadside repairs. Combined with a second puncture for the Dawg, it was once again gone 6.30pm by the time we found somewhere to stay in Lifton (the excellent Arundell Arms, owned and staffed by fellow cycling enthusiasts). After the trials and tribulations of Day 14, we needed a little luxury!

The one real plus of the day was our continuing good fortune with the weather. According to the forecast, today was supposed to be our wettest day of the trip so far: we were expecting the worst. In the end we had 45 minutes of rain around lunchtime. Ha! If you’d offered me that before we left I’d have bitten your arm off. Let’s hope our luck holds for another two days…