Evening,

Is there a 'right' and a 'wrong' direction to ride this? Looking at the contours it seems like either should work, but the northern end is shown as doubletrack on the map, the southern appears to be predominantly singletrack, so I'm guessing North-South is the winner…

Hoping to do a loop from the car park at the end of the Applethwaite road, was going to drop down the side of Latrigg on the BW, then head up the A591 and tackle it North-South – is this reasonable or is there a better route?

Cheers all!

Neil.

Best way is as a figure 8. Start as you propose, into Threlkeld, up the Glendaraterra valley to Skiddaw House, head NW along BW to Mosedale, loop round the north through Fellside and Longlands (loads of old mine tracks etc – don't worry about them not being marked as BW's), ride up past Dash Falls, back to Skiddaw House, then finish around Lonscale Fell. You do miss out the fun descent to Keswick down Latrigg though, so why not start in Keswick and follow the old railway (C2C route) to Threlkeld?

You should have seen SFB's photos just above this thread. We did it in a clockwise direction, because that way you climb on flat-ish doubletrack (but that does get flippin steep), and then all the descending is technical.

The other way around is technical climbing with just a boring flat descent, so I would say while there is no right or wrong, clockwise gives you the most fun.

See pics here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/sets/72157622143982481/

SFB did point out the figure of 8 route but we just did a O shaped loop as it was a beginners ride (17 miles, 3 hours).

I did the loop clockwise. The climb upto the waterfall is erm interesting 😆 Pulling wheelies going uphill is fun 😀

Yeah I noticed that thread this mornign Simon – my mind is now made up 🙂

Cheers all!

the figure of 8 route is ace.

That double track ascent up to Whitwater Dash is an ace descent, brings tears to the eyes. Getting slowed down for the hairpin bend is interesting

NB the route including Calbeck Fell is quite tough at 36 miles! Last time I did it I was too knackered to attempt Whitewater Dash and went back on the road 🙁 Mind you, we had an evil headwind on the way back.