Our journey today took us north up the west coast of Florida, heading for St Petersburg - or St Pete, as the Floridians call it. As we started out the temperature was bearable, with a lot of cloud moderating the heat.

Much of the journey was made up US 41. The road was heavily biult up with strip malls and other businesses, ocassionally broken with housing or empty land. Our route was littered with traffic lights.

We passed through dozens of localities and the major towns of Ft Myers, Port Charlotte, Sarasota and Bradenton.

The west coast of Florida seems as heavily developed as the east coast.

The further we rode the more the clouds cleared and the more temperature soared. Towards the end of our journey we were struggling to cope. We had some respite in the M&D Restaurant.

The Spanish Moss (thanks Deana. I did not know what it was called.) does not seem to attack the palm trees. It was difficult to find shade. Stopping in the sun is stressful.

From Bradenton we crossed the entrance to Tampa Bay on Interstate 275 to reach St Pete. The bridge across the bay is several miles long, with a short raised section to allow ships to pass under. Exposed areas like this are windy.

The roads are so straight in Florida. Chris gets excited if he sees a bend.

Attempts at Spanish style architechture can be quite attractive.

The occasional high rise.

Palms feature in many places. In the country areas there are a variety of palms which are farmed.

When we reached St Pete we first looked for a petrol station to refuel the bike which had been running on reserve for the last 15 or so miles. We searched using our GPS, and it was third time lucky - the first two services stations the GPS sent us to didn't exist - or at least we couldn't find them when the GPS said we were on top of them.

Our next quest was to find a motel with the internet - especially important because the place we stayed last night didn't have it. We got lucky at the second motel.

We pretty much collapsed in a heap when we unpacked, but the air-conditioning soon had us feeling better. More thunderstorms were closing in as we went to find a laundry and supermarket. The first laundromat we stopped at had closed down, but we found another a few blocks further on. At least the supermarket was only a hundred yards away from the laundromat. washing clothes seems to take so much time.