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South Carolina


A rest stop on a quiet road. The road signs in South Carolina combine the shape of the state with the symbol off the flag. The soil is quite red again. I think they want me to stop. This was the home of somebody called General Samuel McGowan. I have no interest in going inside but ... The building on the right is a church. I thought that the one on the left was just a private house w... The shape of the road just before here and the colours of the flowers reminded me of the road into P... The Catholic church. The yellow building is another radio station. Abbeville. Abbeville. Abbeville. The flag of South Carolina, which I ... ... The building on the left is a hotel. As far as I can see, the one called "URBAN 2 Country"... I'm not sure what's happened here. How could something have been driving on this mud fast enough to ... The state outline and logo on a manhole cover. There are a lot of appealing restaurants along this road. Part of me keeps wanting to stop at one bu... A cycle path into the town centre. Strangely, the sign on the right says "NO TRESPASSING FROM SUNSET TO SUNRISE", as if it's ... I've just come through a few suburban streets. This particular style of column is very popular here. Greenwood, South Carolina. The theatre, which strangely they spell properly, is advertising something called "The Penguin ... Outside the Arts Centre and Federal Building. In the garden just next to here, everything is laid ou... Greenwood. Greenwood. The palm tree and partial eclipse logo seems quite popular. Greenwood. On the far left is a man swinging on a swinging bench like the ones that I saw in ... A blue fountain. An emergency call point. There was a smaller one in Abbeville. The green building is my hotel. I didn't know what this grass-covered structure was until I got round to this side. I didn't expect ... Greenwood. Greenwood. This back tyre is much better than the previous one. It's done just over a thousand kilometres now a... Inside the hotel. My room is on the inside so this is the view from my window. I think this might be the first time that there have been proper glasses in the room since Prairie C... Where I come from, Hush Puppies are shoes. I think I'll stick with the lift. That looks like the kind of door which might set off fire alarms. The restaurant is quite swish. I was worried that a posh restaurant like this might serve silly small portions but this starter is ... A few days ago, I saw a man leading a dog into a lift and I was amazed by the very idea of it. In th... In South Carolina, lifts are in the same category as roller coasters. That state logo is everywhere, although the Sun looks a bit too small on this one on my room door. Oh, the poodle has a friend. Most hotels on this trip have allowed people to check in from 3pm and check out up to 11am. It just ... Oops. I've found out what the Penguin Project is. No point in getting on the bike today. Greenwood. This restaurant is closed today because of the weather. Actually, the weather here today is not part... Greenwood. Greenwood. Aren't there supposed to be some bells in that? Greenwood. A carpet shop and a hairdresser's. Churches seem to use types of stone which no other buildings use. That's kind of true back home but ... To waste some time, I've come to look at the back of some gravestones. The first one that I saw conf... The cemetery's signs say "OPEN DAILY FROM SUNRISE TO SUNSET" and "NO TRESPASSING FROM... Yet another church. I don't know why the people here are bothering to water the plants when there's a hurricane on the w... A few days ago, I decided to book the next three nights in Greenwood. There was only one hotel avail... I've come to Applebees for lunch and ordered a rack of ribs on the basis that I can probably waste t... The hurricane has reached Miami but at the moment, it's pretty calm outside here in Greenwood. There's ... Well, that was a short day. I'm only about two and a half days' ride from the coast so if I had left... Evening clouds in Greenwood. There's a supermarket called Food Lion across the road. As well as some other things, I found these ... It's raining now but neither the wind nor the rain are remarkably strong yet. I've been having some ... The signs to hang on the doors in Hampton hotels are stupid. On one side, there is a picture of a ti... I don't have to go far to eat. There's a seafood restaurant next door. I don't think that poster will last much longer. There are some waves developing in the swimming pool. Some forecasts said that the worst of the weather would come over during the night. Others said that... I think I bought too much food on Sunday night. I've only been out for one meal in the last two days... I'm all ready to go. In a few minutes, it will be light enough for me to set off. I think I'm going ... An unexpected fountain. I'm about to get back onto the disused railway line which I used to enter Greenwood on Saturday. Thi... Some old rolling stock. Ah, yes. I thought we might have this kind of problem. There is actually a tarmac path under all this. 96 6? The small sign underneath says that the house where he was born is now on display in Greenwood. More of those gourd homes for purple martins. There's obviously going to be an election here. I heard a woodpecker on that disused railway line this morning. Saluda. Saluda. A fancy set of gateposts but not much else. We have to wait here while some work is done on a fallen tree ahead. An unusual choice at a petrol station in Batesburg. They have a new number... ... Part of it's over here. I have seen a lot of there vehicles in action today, repairing power cables damaged by the storm. Al... I saw advertisements for vineyards in Missouri and Kentucky but I think these are the first grape vi... An area which has recently been logged. The route of a gas pipeline. This is a very empty field. More purple martin gourds. Near here, I saw a sign advertising them for sale. That reminds me of som... Some scenery. This is interesting. I just tried to get some cash out from a machine. I had temporarily forgotten t... Young spiky trees. It looks like sunflower season is over. Swansea. Swansea. A collection of empty cans for a charity. A pylon which uses pulleys. I don't like this road. It has no shoulder at all and rumble strips. It will get less busy after the... Seeing this sign up ahed worried me for a moment until I realised that the trees behind the sign are... My road next to the motorway. There are quiet roads like this on both sides of the motorway. It's like Missouri but with trees. My hotel is just behind the trees on the right and, unusually, it has windows which open fully. It w... I've arrived earlier than I expected. There are still over two hours of daylight left. On ... A logging truck. Two power company trucks next to a collapsed lamppost at the hotel next to mine. For the first couple of weeks, I was using guest laundries in motels quite often. Some of them expec... A lorry has arrived from GE Power. I expect it has brought the replacement lamppost. It's an exciting moment on any trip when I first see my final destination on a sign. It usually happ... Palm trees! Orangeburg, South Carolina. Ready to set off for the final full day. For the third time on this trip, I've just had to tighten s... I think some kind of animal just dived into the water when it saw me, creating the ripples. A small baseball ground called Till Road Park, on Till Road. The bottom part of the sign says... This track is called Jumbo Road. The church in a community called Four Holes. Today's flat scenery. A turkey vulture eating some roadkill. I didn't go over there to find out what the animal was. In th... A rural fire station. These three dogs ran into the road when they saw me but they only chased me for a few seconds and th... A quiet road. Hay bales. A small shop. One rumble strip obviously isn't enough here. In most states, virtually every town is called a city. Not in South Carolina though. I've seen sever... Harleyville. I've been wanting to get a picture of one of these ride-on lawnmovers for weeks. They're pretty ubiq... One of the people who has been following my pictures told me that she had some friends who lived on ... I'm about to cross Four Holes Swamp on a narrow main road which I have been dreading. I've stopped f... Summerville. Some signs here proclaim Summerville to be the birthplace of sweet tea. A house. The house opposite the previous one. A twig got itself jammed in my rear derailleur along here. This cemetery is different. A hurricane evacuation bus stop. For the whole trip, I have been seeing signs saying that traffic in both directions has to stop when... To me, these houses look more normal than most that I've seen on this trip because they are made of ... A wooden bridge. Geese in a park. ... I will be in a cycle lane for most of the rest of the day. A swamp, a spire and a plane coming into Charleston Airport, where I will be on Sunday. I don't know whether the columns are really meant to be that shape, or whether they were bent by the... Could it be Charleston? Just another building. Pelican gateposts. Another boring brick building with exotic trees. Anybody who, like me, has been following the ... Cycling is popular in Charleston. This woman has got a baby in a box on her bike. I thought there would be puddles all over the roads yesterday and today but this has been the only o... There are quite a lot of rules for pedestrians and cyclists on the Arthur Ravanel Bridge. There's no... A view from the bridge ascent. Although these wagons look uniform, they bear the logos of several different railway companies. The bridge and a sailing boat. A view. I can see the Atlantic Ocean! Charleston. Boat storage. A fork lift truck is carrying one of them. On the bridge. Charleston. View from the bridge. View from the bridge. The region beyond the bridge is called Mount Pleasant. It's where I will be staying tonight. Somebody else enjoying the view. The Sullivan's Island Lighthouse, near to were my trip will end tomorrow. A cruise ship. View from the bridge. A model of the old bridge, made out of metal from the that bridge. It seems that a lot of people use this bridge as a place to exercise, rather than for actual transpo... I've realised that this ship is going to go under the bridge so I'm going to wait to see it. The ship. Containers. A parade of small shops. A good road. This is where I will be collecting my hire car tomorrow. I'll only be pootling around Charleston and... Another cyclist. I've been planning this trip for well over a year now. I had always planned to spend the last night ... The new hotel has a Tesla charging station.... Oh... But I left my... Oh never mind. My room has a proper kitchen. There are pots and pans in the cupboards. I was going to talk about the sky in this picture but I'll leave it because there's a better one com... The stairs in last night's hotel were strange. The bottom half a flight were carpeted and dominated ... When I checked in, the man on reception told me that there was a barbecue I could use near the pool.... The road past the hotel is having its lines repainted and maybe having some other work done. The peo... The newly-painted lines. The bright dot in the sky, above the fence line, about a quarter of the way down from the top of the... I had dinner at something which bills itself as a barbecue restaurant. I guess it must use real wood... America is amazing sometimes. I had planned to spend Friday afternoon and Saturday, with my car, sea... This was my unnecessary luggage. These are all items which I have had with me since I left home but ... My final morning. It's incredibly humid at the moment. The bike has got soaking wet just from condensation and my came... The road to Sullivan's Island. The coastal plain. Ben Sawyer Boulevard and the Ben Sawyer Bikeway. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. For most of the length of the US Atlantic coast, deposition has ... A view towards the lighthouse. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Throughout the whole trip, I've been seeing houses with boats parked outside. At last, I'm close eno... Some early morning tennis games. Part of a playground. Ah. Getting to the beach might be slightly tricky. This is as far as the bike can go. It's come 5421 km, or 3369 miles. Access to the beach is through that big puddle. The houses here are designed to cope with the sea rising several metres above its normal level. Here it is. One of the very few public beaches on the Atlantic coast within the path of the total ec... The beach. Sullivan's Island. The beach. Oh look. It's the ship which passed underneath me yesterday, now emerging from the harbour entrance ... That's it. I've crossed the entire continent. I'm ending my journey here at six minutes to eight, to... Thank you for following....