After the gruelling that Chris and I endured yesterday, climbing what to us was the biggest and longest hill we have ever undertaken or could imagine was actually tarmacked, we woke to a fresh day with renewed enthusiasm for the challenge we have still in front of us.
With chains cleaned and re-oiled, we set out with hearts high and legs re energised………. well that lasted a good 500 meters to the 1st of what was to become the norm of the day….. yes hills, how jolly lucky !!!!
Up and down, up and down, until we were met by our trusty support crew some 25 miles or so down the trail to enjoy tea, coffee and copious portions of chocolate cake to keep up our energy levels.
The day progressed on towards a small place called Carlisle, with views of all manner of wildlife, seeing sheep being sheared, even a newly born calf, this itself caused us a little consternation as the rest of the herd appeared to us to be black , and this little chappie was ginger, possibly a little explaining to do at some stage???
Due to intermittent telephone reception we have also bought along our vhf radios, useless is our opinion, apart from the comedy aspect of radio transmissions, the one that made us smile was from out of the blue, a single transmission “ Potatoes are nearly ready “ to whom this was addressed we have yet to find out.
As we headed north out of Carlisle we used a road called the A7, that for the record has to be the most unkind road surface a cyclist could ever wish to use, not only was it bumpy, the weather chose to haunt us with north winds and yes to top it all it poured down incessantly , marvellous !!!
But hey we hit the sign, not literally, that we had been chasing down SCOTLAND, yippee
Our girls had gone ahead to the B& B and organised more tea and chocolate to boost our now battered bodies, only to throw us out gain to finish the last 10 miles up hill in pouring rain, the trail was called “the prehistoric trail”, just a little like the road surfaces….Watch out for more of the day - glo duo’s journey northwards
71 miles. 14.2 mph
Rain and hills and potatoes and hills and chocolate and hills and.....did you feel at home on the prehistoric trail? on the plus side less days to do than done.
ReplyDelete