Planning on driving up the night before and leaving one way hire van @ Whitehaven and finding accomadation(any ideas),setting off from St Bees no later than 9am aiming to get to Ambleside by 6pm is that doable carrying kit?
Need somewhere to stop overnight plus grub and an odd pint.
Not to sure about the next stop half way to Robin Hoods Bay any suggestions, will hopefully end up in Scarborough so last night accomadation should not be a problem.
Last week in September so hopefully the weather will be pretty reasonable.
thanks for any input
Rich
Right, Tankslapper, Bull and I did this a couple of years back. Here's a few things...
The Ambleside YHA us awful and expensive. Boggle Hole is worse (and nowhere near a pub for the 50 beers you'll need when you get there). So I guess spend about £10 pppn more and try for nice B&Bs.
We left St Bees about 8am, and raced into Ambleside at about 4.30. To be honest, we could have at least got to Troutbeck that night, and would have been much better off for it, and day 2 is a MONSTER. I'd try to find somewhere there - getting over that one extra valley when you're stuck in the dismal hell that is Moses Dale above Shap will make you feel much better. It took is 2 hours of carrying to get out of there.
If you're doing it in 3 days, you really need to clear Swaledale completely and get beyond Richmond on day 2. We stayed in an excellent pub in a village called Danby Whiske that night. Last day is a bit easier than you'd think, but we both completely lost the plot at different points. I nearly got flattened by a caravan and would have gone to the length of riding to a bike shop and especially purchasing some Bombers to kill that driver; and Shane lost it when 'one last hill' turned out not to be so, about 4 miles from the finish!
Now then, you say you're carrying kit. We were the fittest we've ever been by soem margin, and struggled in three days. It's about 250 miles, and over 30,000 ft of climbing cumulatively. We were bloody glad of support, and you'll definitely need lights if you're leaving it as late as end of Sept. Our times were:
St Bees --> Ambleside 8.5 hours
Ambleside --> Danby Whiske. We didn't manage it, got scraped up off the road after 14 hours pretty solid. We insisted to be dropped off there the next day to carry on.
5 miles W of Richmond --> Robin Hood's 12.5 hours
Oh, and really, make sure you've got someone to push the bikes back up the hill from RHB beach 😉
also train is easy to whitehaven - lots of bike space on the carlisle to whitehaven train...
there's that 'packhorse' service that'll ferry bags from stop to stop for you too, it's only a few quid per bag per night. never used it but would if I was doing c2c!
having others carry your stuff in a van is really not on is it! best to carry you own stuff, makes the trip more of an experience..
Boggle Hole is ... nowhere near a pub
[url= http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3950255 ]Boggle Hole to Robin Hood's Bay[/url] is a 0.6 mile walk. How close to the pub do you want to be?!
Admittedly, the clifftop path is probably not ideal if you're planning on celebrating too hard! 😉
having others carry your stuff in a van is really not on is it! best to carry you own stuff, makes the trip more of an experience..
250 miles mostly off road, and roughly 30,000 feet of climbing in three days was plenty an experience for us thanks. Obviously on STW there's always going to be someone who could do it backwards on a unicycle in a day, carrying a bus with everyone else's luggage in it. But back in the real world, a van provided us with a just about tollerable compromise between absolute exhaustion and absolute exhillaration flying down the hill to RHB.
How close to the pub do you want to be?!
After completing that, no further than a flight of stairs or so! 😉
One great thing I'll never forget was being cheered by several groups of walkers outside pubs as we got into RHB under lights, looking absolutely shagged. I think there's a look people must have when they get to the end! (Either that, or they simply clocked the van tearing down after us - there's no way on earth we'd had got back up under our own steam!) Bloody tide was out too, so we had to stand in a rock pool!
[url= http://www.whistlingjacks.co.uk/index.html ]Whistling Jacks BnB[/url] was amazing when we did it this May - about 5 mins biking from the C2C start and only a few more from the centre of St Bees. Great food, good chat with the owners, plenty of snacks booze etc for free if you want... And MASSIVE rooms and bathrooms! We also cheated and used a van company - we'd done it 16 years ago without and broke all manner of panniers, racks, rucksacs, and bikes! If you are all pretty fit and have well prepped bikes you could make it to Ambleside in that time frame, but if you have any mechanicals, lack of fitness, bad weather, tiredness etc its going to get tougher... there is a fair amount of pushing on the first day (or couple of days if you do it over a longer time), your average speed can drop pretty slow.
Have fun!
Oh and I'm totally guessing but the [url= http://www.dalesbikecentre.co.uk/accommodation.html ]Dales Bike Centre in Femington[/url] might be about half way there - more bunkhouse than BnB but amazing cake on a 24hr access honesty system!
That's Fremington sorry!
Dales biking centre is a good stop, i got there in 20 hrs from St. Bees, soon after bailed my one hit attempt (solo,unsupported), it's now back on for 2012. 😯
Sadly, Bike centre wasn't there when we did it. Have been there since though, it's great!