The Struggle.
- Tom
- Aug 8, 2016
- 3 min read
Day off- After a few healing beers me and Gaz played some pool and got harassed by a 13 year old Judo champion who looked like she came straight out of a Shane Meadows film.
In order to avoid meeting her again and to stop our legs seizing up we took a 20 mile ride to Windemere to check out the start of the next day. The rest of the day was simply food and rest.
The next day....
We started from Kendal at 6.30am, as we had yet another massive ride ahead of us. Our first destination- The Kirkstone Pass. This 18% hill was sold to us as a massive challenge, but the reward is a long 20% free ride down past Ullswater and onto Penrith.
Prepared for the worst me and Gaz made it up cleanly, surprised, we looked on down to the alternative route up called 'The Struggle.' This beast hits in at 24% and we vowed to go back and do it one day.
The ride down did not dissapoint. It's not so much the speed, but the time you spend at high speed, weaving down trying your best not to touch the brakes. Then there is the views. The lake district is by far some of the most beautiful scenery in the UK and at early dawn it's even more spectacular. You know this is the case, as you feel compelled to repeatedly declare this fact to everyone around you. This was the highlight of the whole ride for us both.
We made excellent time all day. Keeping stops to a bare minimum. We stopped at Penrith and Carlisle for a 'pit stop' that would impress Hamilton. Then up to Dumfries.
I really had to suppress the urge in Penrith to get into a phone box and shout "I'm in Penrith. PENRITH!" Or go fishing with a side by side shotgun. Gareth hadn't seen all of Withnail and I. In hindsight he deserved to be pushed off his bike for such a remark, but we had work to do.
The weather was also on our side. Forecast rain we had glorious sunshine all day. All the gods had blessed us today, including Hamunger (...Matt Griff will explain.) That is until we hit Dumfries. The headwind hit us strong and slowed us down just as we were nearer our limit of fatigue for the day. It was an up hill struggle and I can honestly say we both had to dig very deep at times.
After inhaling a curry we had 25km still yet to go to the campsite. As we set off my legs gave up. I was done. Thankfully Gaz took over and in his slipstream I managed to regain
some strength, which is lucky as Gaz started hitting 28mph! I like to thank Cal Hawes for introducing me to the geeky subject of clouds. My main rescue from collapse was the sighting of a rare cloud formation. Just for Cal- we saw two small sets of lenticular clouds.
At 8pm, after 185km and 1400m of ascent we finally got the site. I will not be sorry if I never cover that mileage again! We have no tent so we settle down in a luxury heated shed.
The rest of our days are all big from today so we are really gonna have to find our strength to get through. Fingers crossed.
Tomorrow. The Isle Of Arran. Can't wait. Hope we don't miss the ferry.
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