Day Five: The Big One! 101kms cycled

We bought our bags down for breakfast at 7am. Not, Jim stressed, him getting soft on us.  Just the earliest the hotel would serve us.

There was an air of excitement in the builders' yard as all the hotel staff came out to cheer us on way and our 8am departure.

We cycled out through the bustle of the town as it set about it's day. Mopeds swarmed around us, children ran to school, the lock ups on the roadside started to open their shutters.

First stop was 23 miles in. Terrain today all tarmac, but the gradient was a steady climb that went on for miles and miles. Once again the overcast weather spared us from the worst of the sun.

Four days in and the joints were starting to creak, the pain on the hills feeling harder to overcome, as one learned to respect the biker's silence as we each deploy our own motivation techniques.

The snack stops are unanimously a motivation, and our next stop was 43kms in but followed by threats of a big 5km hill. Perhaps we have got used to hills, but this one almost passed us by, so the lunch stop at 65km came sooner than we realised.

The food was wonderful. A little local restaurant who had never catered for tourists, and certainly not tourists who smelt like us, and looked like us with our colourful cycle garb, figure hugging Lycra (yoikes!!) and helmet. Lovely vegetables including a spicy pumpkin dish, chicken curry, a cauliflower dish. All delicious.

Peter's hallucinations are getting worse. He seemed convinced that his can of Sunkist was a gin and tonic. The tropical heat does funny things to the mind!

In Myanmar most of the women and children wear thanaka - a yellowish-white cosmetic paste made from ground bark. It is a distinctive feature of the culture of Myanmar, seen commonly applied to the face and sometimes the arms of women and girls. Four female generations of the family running the restaurant took great delight in marking up our female contingent.

And after a good lunch there's nothing better than a gentle cruise downhill for about 23 kms, which is just what we got.

More water at 86km and we started the final push into Mandalay riding single file with arms and index fingers aloft, dodging the traffic. We then regrouped for a surreal 10km cycling on the equivalent of the hard shoulder of the M25; the main dual carriageway into Mandalay. But we clocked 101km just as we reached the illuminated ''welcome to Mandalay'  sign.

Mandalay, the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Myanmar  with a population of 1.2m,  is the most developed I have seen in Myanmar with swish hotels, Ford Motor dealers and a beautiful old palace facing the river.

We invaded a small cycle shop to triple their monthly takings to buy lurid green Mandalay cycle tops and then appropriately enough checked into the Emerald Land Inn.

Dinner at a local restaurant washed down with the local beer, and the pleasing news of a lie- in tomorrow... On the bus at 8am for our final day of cycling.