A heavy frost covered the world around me as I crawled out of my tent at first light. Even the walls of the tent itself were like cardboard. I was cold and I was tired. My feet were frozen. I didn’t at all feel like getting up, but I had little choice in the matter. I battered the ice out of the tent, packed everything away, and got back on my cold saddle. At least Laura was close at hand to warm me up, although unfortunately Laura was not a beautiful woman, but rather the name of a small town, where I soon locked myself in the public toilets and waved shoes, socks, and various body parts under the hot hand dryer.

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This difficult start set the tone for a miserable day. The roads became increasingly busy with traffic and there was no shoulder, the wind was still going the wrong way, and worst of all, it was very hilly. Somehow it felt like I was perpetually going uphill through the rolling countryside. My legs felt so tired. I was physically exhausted, but I was also mentally drained. Three weeks of doing nothing but cycling, day and night, had taken their toll on me. I was sick of it. I wanted a break. I wanted to stop. The only thing that kept me moving at all was that I had a warmshowers host arranged in the town of Clare, and if there was one thing I needed, it was a warm shower.

As I was struggling up yet another hill a truck appeared in my mirror and I pulled over to let it pass. Having gone by me it then almost immediately braked and pulled over to a stop on the verge itself. For a moment I thought the driver was going to have a go at me, something that in my present mood I would have happily responded to with great antipathy. But instead the driver leapt out and came to me with smiles and positive vibes. His name was Bill, a middle-aged man, and a keen cyclist himself, he just wanted to ask me what I was doing and where I was going. “Clare?” he said, “I’m going to Clare. You want to stick your bike on the back, hop in, I’ll give you a lift.”

Was I ever tempted? How sh!tty this cycling was. How difficult it felt. How far away Clare seemed with these hills, with this headwind, with this broken and tired body, this bike that was falling apart. How easy to just accept Bill’s offer. To climb in the cab, accept the offer. Why suffer any longer? This wasn’t fun anymore. I didn’t need to do this. No one would ever know.

“No, thanks Bill, but I’d rather cycle.”

The hills got worse. My mood soured further. I kept feeling like I would soon come to a big downhill that would carry me into Clare, but it never arrived. I just went up and up. Then I realised that the signs that had been telling me how far I had to go to Clare had been lying, and it was further than I’d thought it was. By this stage it would be no exaggeration to describe this as one of the most difficult days of cycling I’d ever had. It wasn’t the worst road, or the worst weather, or the worst anything, it was just one long relentless headf*ck.

I joined a busy main road into Clare just before dark, which meant I had to cycle alongside the rush hour traffic on a dangerous road, in bad light. I screamed at cars that passed too close. I wanted them to stop. I wanted to knock someone out. But they never stopped. Then finally I reached Clare, which turned out to be rather an elongated town, and my host’s house was at the other end of town, actually several kilometres out the other end of town, so I had to keep cycling in the dark. I got to roughly where I thought it might be and asked a woman for directions. “Oh, another few kilometres to go” she said.

A little later, with me in fits of despair, a pick-up truck pulled over and the jolly-faced driver got out to say hello. It was William, my host, who had come to find me. Suddenly I felt much better, and he directed me to his house, which was not far now.

“It’s up a steep hill though” he said.

“How steep?” I asked.

“About 14%. Don’t worry, we can stick your bike in my truck if you want.”

It felt so good to have made it. William and his wife Halima showed me around their home. It was amazing. There was a big double bed that I could sleep in, a warm shower, a washing machine! I showered for the first time in erm… ahem… three weeks and washed my clothes for the first time since… erm… err… Sing… Singapore. Then it was dinner of home-cooked pizza. William used to be a baker for many years, until he gave that up to run his own vineyard. In his spare time he is a ham-radio enthusiast. He told me about this in great detail, and gave me a tour of his radio shack and told me about each and every one of his radios, including a great deal of information about frequencies and wavelengths that I did not understand. If I’m honest, the ham radio tour went on a bit longer than a man in my state of fatigue really required, but I listened politely to my kind-hearted host before I was finally permitted to retire to my double bed.

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Before falling into a deep and wonderful sleep I thought I’d better also make use of the wifi connection, and went onto Skype, where I had a conversation that reminded me of why I was doing this. It instantly made me more determined than ever to make it to Melbourne on time. This had been a most incredibly difficult day, but I had made it through, and here now I could see what it was that I was fighting for. Only nine sleeps to go.

Distance completed: 2799km

Distance to go: 1011km

Days to go: 8.5

Average distance required: 118.9km/day