HCW Day 3 Carlisle to Whitehaven

 We had decided to start early at 7:30am, today being the longest of our planned days at 70 miles. We woke up to rain and got as far as wheeling our bikes down the hotel corridor before changing our plan and staying for breakfast. One cooked brekkie later and we departed the hotel with the rain having already stopped. Being on the road we had rather lost track of the days and it transpired that eating at the hotel was a good plan, since it was Sunday and we didn't pass any open cafés until lunchtime.

Sculpture to commemorate the formation of the RSPB 

We picked our way out of Carlisle, getting the most lost out of our whole trip when we blundered around Carlisle hospital trying to find a nonexistent path to route 72.

Having escaped the clutches of the city, we headed along the Solway Firth, where the beach scenes reminded me of the ubiquitous Jack Vetrianno prints that were everywhere in the 90s (or the late 20th century as the young people now describe it). He sadly passed away in March of this year.

Apparently the singing butler sold over a million prints since 1992

Solway firth, with it's numerous sand banks

We headed West across the pancake, nay rabbit-flat terrain. Across Dykesfield, which spends much of its time underwater. What I assumed to be the Dyke was actually a disused railway, raised up to prevent flooding.

I wouldn't attempt it!

Railway on the left, Solway firth on the right.

We finally arrived at Drumburgh, a coastal village with a "castle" - actually a fortified farmhouse to provided refuge from the border reivers. Apparently they would wade across the firth at low tide on the sandbank know as the Wath. Apparently they were easy to spot and the village inhabitants would take refuge in the farmhouse. By all accounts it was common for raiders to drown by getting stuck in the Solway sands.

A castle designed to disappoint American tourists 

I wouldn't fancy making that crossing on a raid

Riding on to Bowness on Solway, where we posed for a photo by the sign for Rome, before taking a cheeky shortcut south, the first of a few that shaved over 10 miles off our planned route.

Hmm, cycling to Rome. Sounds like a good idea...

...No.

Our next diversion cut out the loop to Silloth - a popular Victorian seaside destination until the Beeching report did for tourism. The old coastal railway must have been pretty special, with the industrial towns giving way to picturesque views across the firth to the Scottish hills. Apparently Silloth is home to the largest village green in England - tempted as we were to view a patch of grass, the reduced mileage was too inviting.

This floods apparently, even though the sea in nowhere to be seen

Continuing South, we took a brief detour to the Lowther Arms - a community owned pub for a spot of light lunch. Just sandwiches Tracy said, although I knew that she would choose a roast dinner if one was going. No roast available and no sandwiches that took her fancy she decided to order the small Haddock. She forgot the word small when the waitress took our order, so she ended up with a big slab of battered fish on a mountain of chips. I helped her out by eating most of her chips, kind-hearted husband that I am. It meant that the next hours riding was challenging, as all we wanted was a Sunday afternoon nap.

South on the coastal path through Allonby bay to Maryport and we seemed to be stuck in a glitch in the matrix. Our view was on constant repeat - grassland and sand dunes to the left, wide beach with a few people and the distant sea on the right. It turns out the bay is absolutely huge and it being quite remote, never seems busy.

Stuck in...

...a loop...

...but looking back from Maryport you can see how big the bay actually is.

We climbed through Maryport golf course, putting at least one golfer off his stroke. A father on his mountain bike passed us coming down the hill, his son perched on the handlebars, his daughter spread across his arms and the crossbar. I marvel at the efforts some people will go to in order to remove their genes from the genepool.

The sculpture is made from Iron ore mixed with resin. Ironically, the iron ore had to be shipped in from Europe

We continued to ride south, another old railway taking us all the way through Workington, whilst providing only a 5 second glimpse of the town centre. The view was the common sight of a Greggs and a neighbouring Costa. Greggs for all your pastry needs and Costa if you're too good for Gregg's. You'll see this pairing in most towns in the UK.

We finally arrived at Whitehaven, took a brief celebratory selfie before heading up the steepest hill of the day to our hotel.

I do love a wind turbine. Trump's a moron. 

Whitehaven quayside 

A reluctant selfie

We ventured out a bit later and ate at the local spoons. I'm not proud, but it is so cheap. We chatted with 4 guys from our hotel who were heading out on the Hadrian's Cycleway and into storm Floris the next morning. They were a bit nervous, but although they might get a bit damp, the tailwinds will speed them along like Olympians.

Tracy's wall collection:

Morrisons supermarket wall

Hadrian's wall

Barn wall

Farm wall

Choose your favourite.

Distance covered: 58 miles 

Elevation: 1540ft

Tracy whinge factor: 0/10 she is a delight when there are no hills to climb 

Cake of the day: Unfortunately a cakeless day, but depending on your point of view, she had two yesterday.

We are riding around Ireland next year. We have learnt that we will need more training beforehand. We were a bit blase this trip, thinking that it would be easy after LEJoG last year. It wasn't - the Pennines were more challenging than anything we did last trip.

HCW Day 2 - Hexham to Carlisle

We made an earlish start, leaving the Travelodge at 8:30. Initially our progress from Hexham was slowed by the number of park runners on route. We passed Vindolanda, another Roman fort, although we decided not to stop - we are now experts on all things Roman. In fact, we have been invited back to Vindolanda as guest lecturers next summer.

A pretty route 

View of Vindolanda 

Way markers on route

Perfect cycling weather

We continued on to the Sill - the National Landscape Discovery Centre at Once Brewed (yep that is the name of the village) for a coffee. Tracy obviously had her criminal head on today, trying to walk out of the coffee shop without paying and doing the same thing 5 mins later in the gift shop.

Cake at last - Raspberry and lemon muffin

We took a walk up towards the wall with the intention of hiking to the now sycamore-less gap. Tracy was a little underwhelmed when we eventually reached Hadrian's Wall. In her head she had pictured something a bit closer to the great wall of China, not the foundations of a construction site. We walked along a bit, but decided to head back to the bikes instead. A hike along a fragmented low wall to see an empty gap had lost it's appeal.

A mile castle on the wall

The wall itself

The remains of the sycamore gap tree have been turned into an art installation inside the Sill. The amount of merchandise related to the tree is huge, if anything it has become a more famous tourist attraction after it was felled. Perhaps Northumberland should consider a radical campaign to increase visitor numbers, vandalise their own tourist attractions. Angry tourists will flock to the site that they couldn't be arsed to visit before.   

The sycamore gap installation 

A bit like a peeled banana?

We continued on to Haltwhistle - the self proclaimed centre of Britain. We stopped for lunch and a bit of a rest and got talking to Steve. He is a keen cyclist and was asking about LEJoG, as we were wearing our jerseys from last year. He had promised himself that he would do it before his 60th birthday, but as he only has two months left, he has put the deadline back! He was asking for advice and we shared our blog address.

The lesser know variety of local sheep - The Northumbrian long neck

Creative bollards

Creative marketing 

Centre on England marker - never let facts get in the way of self promotion.

The afternoon continued with sunshine, headwinds and a bit more wall. We cycled past Birdoswald, another Roman fort - the staff begged us to come in as visiting experts to lead some of the tours, but we needed to ride on.

Tracy sat next to the sign saying please don't climb on the wall. Naughty girl

More wall. Unless it's 4m high...

...complete with a Roman garrison, We're not bothered.

We stopped again for ice-cream at Moos in Brampton, a lovely treat, but the combination of Cherry icecream and Pepsi Max gave me cherryade flavoured burps.

Remains of a mile castle

After Brampton, we were worried about the approaching  hill - the toughest of the day. Turns out it was relatively straightforward - nothing but a pimple compared with the Pennines.

Lanacost Priory 

I think the signs wrong - 12% maybe?

I think Tracy expected the mile castles to be more like this modern folly

We eventually arrived in Carlisle, the cycle route bringing us into the heart of the city through the park.

Memorial in the park

We decided to go for Thai food this evening as we worked our way through our global cuisine to do list this week. And also there was a Thai restaurant on the same road as the Travelodge. It looked full when we arrived but they managed to squeeze us into a corner. Turns out everyone else in the restaurant was celebrating a Thai lady's 60th birthday who appeared to be related to the owners. The party was in full swing and there was much merriment, dancing and singing which kept us entertained and the food was amazing. They even gave us 2 pieces of the black forest gateaux birthday cake to make us feel included. 

We then had a discussion about whether gateaux was a dessert or a cake. I'm in the cake camp (it's a chocolate cake with cream, clearly) but Tracy is in the dessert camp. Feel free to contribute but you're not allowed to Google it. Google spoils the best debates. 

Gateaux - cake or dessert?

Distance covered: 53 miles 

Elevation: 3706ft

Average speed: 8.9 mph

Tracy whinge factor: 0/10

Cake of the day: Raspberry and Lemon muffin 6/10

HCW Day 1 South Shields to Hexham

Thursday saw us take a day off from cycling. We headed 5 minutes from our apartment in South Shields to Arbeia Roman fort. Here we extended our knowledge of the "Rotten Romans" beyond what we had learnt by watching Horrible Histories with the kids.

A reconstruction of the gatehouse at Arbeia

Tracy the centurion 

We then took the metro into Newcastle where we meandered our way towards the Great North museum getting suitably lost on the way due to an inability to use Google maps - a sure sign of old age! We discovered the Great North museum to be like a combination of the British and Natural history museums - filled with swag and dead stuff. The ironically named Living World gallery in particular was filled to the gills with a menagerie of stuffed animals. Apparently a number of them were rescued from the collections of Victorian trophy hunters from when young gentleman would head to the colonies to shoot things in order to demonstrate their own importance.

On the way back to the metro, we accidentally bought two prints from a Lucy Pittaway gallery - at least that's Tracy's birthday sorted! On returning to South Shields we took a stroll across the park towards the beach so we could see the sculpture "The conversation piece" or more locally "The weebles".

Pleased to meet you

"Weebles wobble but they don't fall down, weebles wobble but they don't fall over" - Scott and I had an argument about which was correct for several weeks in the days before Google.

Sculpture at South Shields 

Dinner was at the Italianish - a Spanish/Italian fusion restaurant sandwiched between the seemingly infinite number of Indian restaurants. The food was delicious. We then headed back to the apartment, having walked over 20 000 steps on our supposed rest day.

So onto today - the start of the return leg to Whitehaven along Hadrian's Cycleway. The route was mostly flat and at only 35 miles we would have to find distractions on route. It was definitely a day of cycle tourism rather than cycle touring.

A quick 5 minute ride to the South Shields ferry before following the Tyne, passing the old dry docks - all that remains of the shipbuilding history of the region. 

It officially begins

A nice local took a picture for us on the ferry.

We stopped at Segedunum, the Roman fort at Wallsend and the start of Hadrian's Wall. We continued our lessons in Roman history, but we found the history of shipbuilding at Swan Hunter shipyard more interesting. They are most famous for building the Mauritania. The terraced homes of the shipyard workers used to cover the site of the Roman fort, with families living on the shadow cast by the behemoths that were being built literally at the end of the street.

Thought that this was a strange slogan to put on the side of an industrial looking building...

...turns out it was the Roman museum.

View from the tower at the remains of the fort

We stopped at the museum for coffee. Because it was instant Nescafé, the staff at Segedunum actually apologised for selling it to us. 

We continued on alongside the Tyne, passing through the bars and restaurants in areas like Gateshead that have undergone regeneration. Still many areas showed the legacy of the industrial past.

The old dock at Wallsend

Where they used to load coal on the Tyne. Apparently there were 30 wooden jettys

Plenty of...

... regeneration going...

...on too!

We passed a tiny cottage where George Stephenson was born and lived until he was 8 years old.

George Stephenson lived here along with 3 other families with his family occupying one room. Rosie stop moaning that your room is too small!

We paused at Tyne Rowing Club for lunch. We shared a white chocolate millionaires shortbread whilst we waited. Tracy wolfed hers down before we got a photo, so she used mine as a prop, only using all of her will power to avoid eating mine too.

A great place - cheap and good food.

Almost lost my cake!

Less than 20 quid, including the cake!

We met a rowing cyclist from Holland. He was riding a recumbent bike with a rowing action instead of pedalling - it looked slightly bizarre, but he was fast. He explained that he had an even more niche bike at home - a rowing tandem, where you sit back to back!

Looks mad...

...but he was damned quick (at least compared to us)

We continued on after lunch, finding that it felt odd to rejoin the road at Prudhoe, having spent the last 50 miles riding on anything but the road!

Great mural, next to the dog washing machine 

Another day, another bridge

We stopped at Grants patisserie in Corbridge - the cakes looked too good to pass up. Besides which we'd only had half a cake each at this point. Tracy couldn't finish hers, so we packed it for later (full disclosure; I ate it!)

My lemon meringue 

And Tracy's choice. Works of art. But they would be at 6 pounds each!

We continued on to Hexham, missing out the planned stop at Corbridge Roman town. We were too tight to spend £28 to continue our education on all things Roman.

As close as we got to the Roman town having spent all our money on cake

Onto Hexham where we had planned to meet Elaine and her husband David - another of Tracy's friends from university days. Great curry at Zyka in Hexham and even better company before we walked back to our Travelodge and some sleep.

Old friends - 12 years since they last met, but chatting like they saw each other last week 

Miles covered: 34

Average speed: 9.2mph

Cake of the day: Chocolate salted caramel tart 9/10 

Tracy whinge factor: 0/10