Day 2 – St Bees to Patterdale Despite the hangovers we woke up early for a full English, tea, toast, fruit, cereal the works! It had rained overnight and was still a little drizzly when we awoke but no wind and some cloud cover to keep the sun off us was a win. After breakfast we headed down to the post office to send the bike bags to robin hoods bay. This turned out to be a fairly complicated process, due to the size of the bags. When folded the bags where only approximately 60cmx30cmx30cm, yet the woman who served us wasn’t sure if they’d fit. She claimed the max size was 1.5mx3m and she couldn’t tell if the package was under that or not… Anyway she did some measuring and finally agreed to send the bags for only £15.60, this held us up and we didn’t actually get a chance to set off until 10:00! While in the post office we met a lovely woman who was attempting the C2C for her second time nd believed we’d spend a lot of time carrying our bikes if we truly wanted to follow Wainwrights route, ha, how wrong she was! Down to the beach to dip the rear wheel in the sea before setting off on our journey! Off we went a long the tops of the cliffs admiring some wonderful views and falling… quite a lot. I’m not sure if it was the wet, the hangover or not being used to cycling with so much weight on our backs but for the first 5 miles we couldn’t stay on our bikes! Not so great when you’re cycling along the top of a cliff! Anyways by the time we’d came to the first town we’d found our legs and were settled in the journey. We crossed many fields, bogs, railway lines and towns before entering into the Lake district! What an amazing place! Truly breath taking, both by it’s beauty and the physical challenge! Up the first mountain, yes we got this! Coming down the other side was awesome, however it was still wet and it was very steep, pretty funny video of me flying over the handle bars should be up when I return. Luckily the bike wasn’t damaged and I somehow avoided injury. I did scrape my Surface but I count myself extremely lucky as I could have got very hurt! On the same decent Dad went down and lost his speedo, which he only realised 15 mins up the road, so we had to go back an search for it and somehow found it! Woot! The next section taught us a few thing, firstly that women can be right the odd time as yeah, we really did have to carry our bikes… a lot. In Ennerdale we followed a fantastic trail around the lake only to be stopped by vertical climbs and boulder fields that were difficult enough to walk on never mind cycle. What should have been a 15 minute blast turned in to an hour long struggle, with ever passer by commenting that if we’d went the other way around the lake it was perfect for cycling! Yet we endured and finally reached an access road that carried us deep into the Lakes. Then we met our nemesis, Black sail. We had noted that there was a steep climb at the end of the track but we were not prepared for this. It was marked on the map as a path… Well this path went straight up and over, steeper than any climb I’ve ever done hiking and was less path, more boulder field. Carrying a bike and a rucksack up this was hell. Never has every muscle in my body hurt as it did making that climb. But sure what goes up must come down and when we finally did make the top, we’d fly down and be in Rosthwaite for lunch in no time. Wrong, while the top was flat, it was also a boulder field and we had to walk the bikes for quite some distance before finding a suitable decent. Now we’re 3 hours behind schedule and genuinely concerned that we won’t make Patterdale before dark so we reassess. Instead of continuing on Wainwrights ballbuster across the mountains we decided to follow the road for the final 18 miles. They were a painful load of miles. From Rothswaite we had to head to Keswick and around the mountains, this meant we skipped Grasmere but we needed to or else rather than lying in bed typing this up, we’d still be up there carrying our bikes up the next ballbreaker and even with our sneaky detour we still ran out of daylight. Flying down hills in to Patterdale was pretty dam cool but scary as hell, it was dark, it was a case if try and spot the white line and follow that. We finally arrived in to Patterdale at 8:28, 2 mins before they stop serving food so we had to blast our orders in then and there. Steak please, we deserve it! After we ordered had to run down to the B&B and grab the key quickly and get back before the food was served. Fantastic meal but I did feel a little guilty siting in this restaurant in full cycle gear clobbered in muck! After the grub it was simply back to Old Water View our B&B tonight for a quick shower, a pint of some C2C larger that actually tasted great while checking our strava and watching some videos. Turns out we did over 53 miles and climbed 7,000 feet, what’s that? Donard twice? Yeah, just the one pint tonight, today was pretty brutal, easy day tomorrow so we’ll see how things go in Keld!
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 07:48:31 +0000
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