Day Seven - Shorter, Harder, and Mostly Fantastic

Woke up happy. Happy to be in a nice little town surrounded by nice little mountains, and the sun was out. This was our first of two short days, at 68 miles, but with maybe a bit of climbing. Our projections for mileage were spot on, but our elevation had been way off so we just took it as it came (not like there was any other way to do it), but today looked like there would be plenty of uphill.

Another big breakfast, on the bikes, a quick stop at Tesco to pick up the days food, and we made our way out of Windermere. We didn't get the chance to check the place out at all, having had dinner and breakfast where we stayed, but it's definitely a place we'd like to go back to. It has a bit of a feeling like Banff in terms of a picturesque setting and crawling with tourists; many of whom being cycling, hiking and/or water sports enthusiasts. Seems like there was tons of shopping too, if that's your sport of choice.

Once out of the town (and a little before, too) we were sent straight uphill. We knew this would be the case, though. A couple of months ago we watched a few programmes that followed the 10 best driving routes around England in the 1950's, and this was one of them. It highlighted a section that was officially called "the struggle" - and that was in a car. Thankfully, there are two ways up the struggle that meet at the top, one being slightly less steep than the other. Neither is particularly easy.

So for the first 8 miles of our short day, we went straight uphill. There were a few sections that forced us off of our bikes, as the grade eclipsed 20% at some points. Once we cleared Windermere and the treeline (such as it is), the views were superb. Even the torturous ribbon of pavement that wound it's way up was an impressive sight.

The peddles slowly turned over and miles slowly ticked by. Tourists passing us in cars clearly didn't expect cyclists to be riding up this hill (we weren't the only ones) as they rubbernecked or snapped a couple of pictures of us, but the scenery kept our spirits up, and I always like a good hill.

We rounded the corner to the summit and stopped at the UK's highest inn to take in the views on both sides, admiring the thin black line that wound it's way back down what we'd just climbed. As a reward, we had a couple miles of downhill to give our lungs and burning legs a break, and more to feast our eyes on.

Much of the road was as steep going down as it was coming up, so it wasn't completely relaxing with my trailer always threatening to bring me down, but still great fun. We were fed into a small plain that followed the river at the bottom of the mountain and wound it's way into the next lake, so we had a few miles of relatively flat road at a good pace through lush forests and around glass smooth lakes, surrounded by green lumpy hills.

This didn't hold out for too long before we started to climb again, and as we were looking at quite a nice view, and the sun was out, we decided to break for lunch. The blue sky had a few fluffy white clouds in it, so we were a bit confused when we heard what initially sounded like a peel of thunder, but ended up being a fighter jet doing an unusually low pass over the lake we had just gone around. Unexpected to say the least. Now, neither of us are particularly interested in aircraft, but the noise and sheer power of a fighter jet pounding through the hills is mighty impressive. Like the first one, the jet that followed a couple of minutes later practically shook the ground beneath us as it cut through the mountains. Big respec, innit!

10 miles later, we had done most of the days climbing, and were glad for it, having covered 4000 feet in 30 miles. As soon as we left the Lake District, the rest of the day was relatively flat and the almost 10 lovely miles of mild descent into Carlisle, which was absolutely fantastic. Myra continued to disappear into the distance with her advantage downhill, and the jets kept flying overhead, so it must have been an airshow or a military base doing some training nearby.

Traffic had been fine and the roads fairly quiet and well behaved in the park. Once out of the park, we had to join a busier road for a couple of miles to get to our next minor road. I was making my way into the turning lane to cross the road and having made my intentions clear, while in the middle of the lane, a car sped past doing about 60mph  in the turning lane to get around us, instead of just waiting half a second for me to move into the turning lane. Absolute nutters. Aside from that, we had experienced little in the way of danger on the road (with a couple of exceptions).

The weather had been fairly calm for the most part, but now that the mountains were behind us for the day, the wind picked up and was in our faces. We almost found the flat terrain with wind worse than the hills. It wasn't particularly pretty at that point and the road was dead straight for a few miles, so I'm sure that didn't help, but it was a bit of a slog for the last part of the day.


My bike was doing a bit poorly, so much so that when we reached Carlisle we looked for a bike shop to give it a bit of love. As was  the case so often, though, we were behind schedule and still had a few miles to go. We found one on our route and picked up some tubes and pumped up our tyres properly, but didn't end up doing much else but waste about 45 minutes. There wasn't much of interest from here onwards, except for two things.


One was the wind. Until now we had been going north. The wind had been WNW at a pretty good clip. A few miles after Carlisle we turned due west, and from then on it was ridiculous. Our pace slowed to a crawl and the only thing that gave us a bit of a lift was...

...the second thing. The town of Eastriggs. Myra saw some sign that it was some sort of Commonwealth town, and all the streets were named after places England had acquired; Delhi, Brisbane, Victoria, etc. In the midst of a pounding headwind at the end of a hard day, a little sign brought a smile to my face:

 

The rest of the day went as it had before, but the B&B we were staying at tonight offered massages, and we had earned it. Again, really nice people, and a great house. We had arrived late yet again, so while Myra was getting her massage, I went out to pick up a bit of dinner for us.

Annan is a small town. Like most small towns in the UK, pretty much everything shuts early. It was about 7 or 7:30, and already most places had shut, which is bizzare enough. When I got to the Subway, which we were actually looking forward to (simple, easy, fairly healthy, lots of carbs), although the door was open, the girl behind the counter said they were shut. A Subway shut at 7:30. When do people eat? Frustrated, I went back and got the address of pretty much the only place left open - Chinese takeaway. Not ideal, but not any worse than curry.

Another late night, more bad food, and a rough end to the day,  but we saw some great scenery and had some epic roads under our belts. England finished with a bang, and Scotland had just begun. Tomorrow should be wet with not too much climbing, and will bring us a couple of hours from the Atlantic. Seems like a day just to get some miles out of the way, but we'll see soon enough.