All pretty chopper so far - sally spent journey up from Kent stripping
Her luggage down (under bar bag was weighing 5 kg!!!) car
Full of various ointments. Whilst alan was doing the opposite - thought he had to carry a sleeping bag
So suddenly found he had extra space
34 miles and 1600m climbing done from troutbeck to coniston. just had a pint and lunch and about
To toddle off up walmart scar. Added a few
Miles by doing half north face trail
It's been epic so far.........
Laters
"Walmart Scar"
At least we know who sponsored the re-surfacing work...... 🙂
Good luck with the rest of the trip - pretty windy just now
is that near the Tesco-trail?....
Glad it's going well! Fingers crossed you stay this cheerful over you-know-where!
?tesco trail
Asda be a good in.
well the wheels came off a bit!
got a bit navigationally mixed up over near Stanton Ground (Garmin running out of battery etc) - nothing major but slowed down progress.
Not much enthusiasm for the bog of hell / divorce hill so we opted for Hardknott, but it was a 5 mile 8 mph slog into a headwind to get there. Got to YHA in Boot about 830, after 55 miles and around 2500 m vertical. But all still chipper enough
Next day was 'ard work. Started a bit late (930) and made pretty slow progress. Have done the trail from Eskdale to Was****er before, but it seemed harder than I remember - lots of tricky rocky sections on the way up which had us either blowing like buffalo, or walking, then it was pretty boggy past the Tarn, so more walking. Descent I think has been "sanitised / Tesco'd / Asda'd" too.
Think we may have taken the walking trail up Blacksail instead of the bridleway, so it was a pretty hard hike a bike - bad enough for me and Alan at 15 ish stone, but Sally was struggling a bit hefting 20 ish kg of bike and gear at 9 stone 3. What I didn't expect was to push / carry down a lot of the way too! Ditto the next pass to Buttermere. Probably someone is going to tell me it's all rideable but not for me it ain't! (especially at 48 1/2, 3 kids, self employed!)
So we heading up Honister pass at about 3 pm, with only 15 or so miles covered, a lot of them walking, way behind where we needed to be, but it was a relief to actually ride a bit. Cracking trails over towards Keswick, then the mother of all short cuts - missed the bit north of Keswick, took the disused railway on the Sustrans route, then over the Coach road, and road to Patterdale, so cut all the Ullswater stuff on the east of the lake (which was annoying......) In about 830 again - 40 miles, 2000m ish climbing, very sore bottoms...........
Today went over High Street - big old heft up that! Then great riding down but elected (a bit unwillingly on my part) to go straight back to car in Troutbeck, and missed the Stavely / Garburn loop.
Pretty epic though - consistently challenging riding, lot of carrying. Doing it in 2 days is pretty incredible, 3 a real challenge
for most - we're reasonably fit, but not ultra endurance athletes. Given my time again I think I'd go for 4 days - especially considering we had good weather. You definitely work for your miles in the Lakes!
But overall one of the best things I've done on a bike
well done. Just as much mountain as bike. A great antidote to all those 'how do you think my bike looks' tosh posts
C
don't you want to know what tyres / wheel sizes / width of bars we used??!!
(snakeskin Nic / ralphs btw, so issues at all with cuts / punctures on the rocks, but my Ralph is pretty knackered and it was pretty new at the start; Sally's is okay though. More a woods tyre i think!)
