Friday 8th April 2022.
It’s not often that I get the chance to go on a cycling trip organised entirely by someone else, but this is my good fortune this weekend. I think the trip was originally a training weekend for a charity ride, but when it was initially scheduled in 2019, we had no idea of how 2020 (and 2021) would unfold. But now, more than two years later, I can enjoy three days of cycling (fully paid for in 2019) in beautiful countryside with ten others, six of whom I’d never met before today (including the organiser). [The charity ride is still going ahead in July, riding from Newcastle to Carlisle (I think) and down to Burnley. It’s something organised supporting Prostate Cancer charity connected with Burnley FC]
We are in a hostel in a remote location near Keswick, and after a morning drive to the accommodation (with Jim Solan), the first ride was out into the nearby hills. The routes had been pre-planned, and whilst I was grateful for this, I felt very guilty on my first meeting with the organiser, asking if he would mind if I rode the route in reverse. When I explained that the initial route, while absolutely fine, took riders over both the Honister and Whinlatter passes, but in the wrong direction to that prescribed by Simon Warren (of ‘100 Cycling climbs’ fame) he not only understood, but he even suggested that all the riders should follow this suggestion! And that’s how I came to bag a couple more ‘100 climbs’ today. In truth, I could only claim one additional one, having previously climbed Honister in 2018, but I did manage to knock about 5 minutes off my personal best.
The weather was gorgeous – sunny, a bit cold for April, but dry – so cycling through the snow-capped mountains was great. The wind was quite strong, but gave me a boost up Honister, which probably helped with my PB time.
Another excellent part of this weekend is that the food is already paid for, and was taken at the local pub where we could choose anything on the menu apart from steak (which attracted a premium). The portions were satisfyingly generous a feature always welcomed by hungry cyclists. Breakfast tomorrow is in the same pub, but I suspect that Theakston’s Best will not be accompanying our cornflakes.
A longer, but less hilly ride is scheduled for Saturday, and I’ve had no urge to modify it in any way. We will initially head up alongside Bassenthwaite Lake, turn North to Wigton before skirting Carlisle and returning South back to Keswick. These will be all new roads for me, which is a real bonus.
Saturday 9th April 2022.
What a great breakfast this morning! Rather than going to the pub for breakfast, returning, picking up the bikes and then starting the ride we decided to set off on our bikes and call into the pub en route. So we all turned up at 8:15 in our cycling togs and spent 3/4 hour solidly eating our way through all the toast, cereals, full English, orange juice and tea/coffee. Of course, all this did nothing for my hill-climbing abilities, but neither did the large meal and beer the night before. Thankfully, the first eight miles were flat but then the climbing began. There were no official ‘climbs’ on today’s ride, but lots of climbing. In fact, there was more climbing today than yesterday, albeit over 15 more miles.
I felt that we were spoiled for lunch, finding, as we did, a Cranston’s café on the outskirts of Carlisle. We found a table reserved at 1.30 for ‘Jackson’, so we nabbed that one on the grounds of one of our party was called Jack and it was 45 minutes before the real Jackson was due to arrive. (We got away with the minor deception.)
Of course after lunch, we began to climb again, all the way to almost 300m which made the ride down to Keswick all the more welcoming. For the last few miles, we chanced upon a cracking cycle track into Keswick alongside the River Greta which I suspect was once a railway line. Glass-smooth tarmac and downhill – who could ask for more?
Today wasn’t as sunny as yesterday, but just as cold. In fact, for a few minutes we encountered soft hail. This was OK, but proper rain would have been very unwelcome since I hadn’t taken waterproofs and the bike had no mudguards.
We haven’t eaten yet, but I have every expectation that the food at the Swinside Inn will be just as good as yesterday. And just as filling.
Sunday 10th April 2022.
I have eaten much more on this trip than I normally do. The breakfasts were enormous, including oversize strawberries the size of tennis balls (I don’t think they were grown locally) and huge Cumberland sausages, as you might expect in this neck of the woods. On each day, we had a ten mile stretch alongside Bassenthwaite Lake to warm up the legs and burn off some of the excess calories before the climbing began. Having said that, Sunday’s ride was entirely flat, apart from the bits that weren’t.
There was a hill soon after we left the lake, the top of which afforded great views across the Solway Firth. We could spot our planned lunch stop at Silloth, still 20 miles away, but what was lovely to see were the many wind turbines all turning to face us. I thought it was a welcoming gesture to us visitors, but after lunch I realised that they were actually just turning to face the wind, which I also did as soon as I began to head South towards our villa. (I say ‘villa’ because I am on holiday and it just felt the right thing to call the accommodation. It’s actually a hostel owned by a Mountain Rescue organisation, I think. It’s very basic, but has everything we need, and what it doesn’t have, the pub half a mile up the road, does (beer, good food, WiFi…))
But back to food. Many of the group had generously brought trays of flapjack and cake, bunches of bananas, packets of biscuits, energy bars and gels. AND we stopped for a proper lunch each day. I’m not sure what prompted this calorie-fest, but I was certainly never hungry.
For lunch in Silloth the organiser had given us a list of four eating establishments which sold good food on Sundays. I was relieved to discover that he only intended for us to visit one, not all four. We chose a posh-looking café on the front going by the name of Mrs Wilson’s. Inside, one complete wall of the café was filled with memorabilia from Kathleen Ferrier, who, as I’m sure you all know, was a famous opera singer born in Higher Walton. So I needed to find her connection with Silloth. Apparently, Ms. Ferrier married a bank manager called Mr Wilson and then moved to Silloth in 1936, hence the café name, and probably the premises (it had the appearance of a provincial bank). When one of our group politely asked a mature lady behind the counter whether she was Mrs Wilson, he was amused by the response, “nah, lad, she died in 1947”.
Beautiful, smooth and flat roads swiftly took us back to the hillier terrain South of Abbeytown when I began to regret the chips with chilli sauce I had for lunch. We were all back by 3:30 after about 170 miles and 12,500 feet of climbing over the three days. One interesting fact I learned on this trip is that although we rode alongside the Solway Firth, when I checked there is no Solway river. This huge estuary is mainly fed from the rivers Esk and Eden with a few other tributaries, but no Solway. When you Google why the Firth is so named you get sent down various rabbit holes including a Solan Goose (which is actually a Northern gannet) and an old Nordic name for a river crossing, but not the answer to my actual question; where’s the River Solway? Maybe I’ll never know.
