Tuesday 17th October 2023.
I haven’t cycled much in the Lake District. I’ve done a little bit in the Northern Lakes and I once did a sportive which started in Grasmere and meandered through the Grizedale Forest to Cartmel. The sportive doesn’t appear on my stats since for some reason the Garmin failed to record the ride, so Strava doesn’t show that I did it. And you know what that means!
Anyway, for the next three days I’ll be exploring bits of the southern lakes. They will be very specific bits since I’m keen to push my Veloviewer cluster further north.
So today, after having a ‘flu vaccination at 10.25, I headed up the M6 and parked near Kendal before following a very circuitous route on quiet roads capturing some new tiles. Since I set off late, I’d only planned a 38 mile ride and I arrived at the Hawkshead hostel an hour before it opened and so I went for a short ride from there until it opened at 5pm. In total today I gained another 29 new tiles and boosted the cluster by 27. The cluster should’ve been higher since when I planned the ride I noticed that one tile was just 200 metres off my route, albeit on a fast dual carriageway. In the event, because I failed to mark the point on the route, I completely forgot until I’d completed the ride!
I never actually went into Kendal, but kept to the minor country lanes close to the town. On one tiny road, I was surprised to meet two huge articulated trucks coming towards me. A few minutes later, I saw an industrial estate with huge warehouses. It turned out that this was the distribution centre for Lakeland, the kitchenware company.
The hostel is fairly quiet. I’m in a dorm with 8 beds, but it seems that only three others are occupied. At the moment. There’s still time for a contingent from the British Snoring Society to check in though. (There is such a thing by the way!)
I’m self catering tonight. I’ve got a cottage pie (from our favourite local supplier) with carrots and peas. I’d better go and pop it in the oven now, since other people are cooking (it’s 6:30) and the smells are making me hungry.
Later: The kitchen was busy when I got there, but I found an oven that was free and turned it on to the recommended 180°C. After a few minutes I was aware of a burning smell and looked round to see who was incinerating what. I was puzzled to see people looking at me with the same expression before realising that my oven was emitting grey smoke! It seems that there was some food left in there from a previous user and it was now approaching ignition point. I quickly turned off the oven and tried in vain to remove the charred remains of someone’s dinner. I failed.
Then I had to find another oven and start all over again. The cottage pie took a lot longer to warm than it ought since the next oven I chose wasn’t that efficient. It didn’t seem to be getting that warm on the recommended setting so I boosted it to 250°C, but even then the ‘cook for 15 -20 minutes’ instruction appeared to be out by a factor of three. Anyway, everything worked out well in the end, although it took over an hour to warm through a single pie.
I’m on my Dawes bike this week although I’m not touring. I thought it’d be handy to have a rack and a small bag in case I need additional warm clothing and/or wet weather gear. So far, the weather’s been good. Dry, occasionally sunny but chilly at 8° to 10°. I think there’s more of the same tomorrow when I’m planning to head off to Walney Island. The forecast for Thursday looks grim, though. I might be heading home early rather than face the heavy rain, but I’ll see. The forecasters have been wrong before…
Wednesday 18th October 2023.
I set off after a wonderful ‘all-you-can-eat’ breakfast which set me up with plenty of calories, but perhaps a few extra pounds of weight, which isn’t a good idea in these hills. The weather was fine and dry but with a strong Easterly wind. That didn’t matter as much as I thought until I reached my destination of Walney Island where the exposed site meant that I felt every gust.
The route was generally SSW so I should have felt the benefit of the wind, but my speed didn’t reflect this. I always go much slower in undulating country, especially here when you can’t really take advantage of the frequent descents since they are usually too short to build up speed and/or they are on narrow roads with blind bends. Whatever the excuse, the average speed was less than 12mph by the time I reached the flat lands around Barrow. There I enjoyed over 20 miles of totally flat landscape, but the wind put paid to any significant increase in speed.
Beyond Ulverston, I followed the Ulverston Canal to the coast. Although only 1.25 miles long and arrow straight, the canal is an amazing 15 feet deep! Why? That seems awfully deep especially since the size of any ship is limited by the lock.
I was very impressed with the Southern end of Walney Island. It was so isolated and quiet: very peaceful and beautiful. The only road users seemed to be people coming or going to the huge caravan park at the furthest point. Well the furthest point that the road went: there was more, but not on a road bike.
I made a few diversions to gather more Veloviewer tiles today, augmenting my total by 35. I’m very proud to be the first person in the world to claim one particular tile which was on the seaward side of the island. I had to cycle along a cliff-top path for a quarter of a mile to reach it though.
The tile cluster remains unchanged however. Tomorrow’s ride was designed (in part) to address this, but looking at the weather forecast, it may not now happen. Solid rain all day may well put me off a 60 mile ride. For now, though, it’s time for tea if the kitchen is quiet enough.
Thursday 19th October 2023.
After tea last night (no kitchen dramas, thankfully) I bought myself a pint and sat in the hostel lounge to read a book, but I only lasted half an hour. Sitting directly behind me was a couple of families whose conversation was very annoying. The mums were bitching loudly about a friend of theirs who’d received Botox and had her eyebrows done (I may have agreed with their sentiments, but they could have spoken more discreetly). Their two girls (aged between 7 and 9 I guess) were chattering constantly and very loudly. One of them was wearing headphones and so she thought she had to shout to make herself heard. The others appealed to her to remove the headphones but she didn’t apparently hear them. Eventually I relocated to the dining area which already had two couples seeking similar refuge!
It is now Thursday morning and it’s raining and although the forecast is for the rain to ease to drizzle mid morning, at present I’m undecided whether to do the ride but I’m leaning towards wimping out. The route I’ve planned is 60 miles and would fill in a lot of gaps in tiles, but I really don’t fancy getting soaked. I could always drive up from home later in the year and do the ride on a dry day. It’s very pleasant just now sitting in the (blissfully quiet) lounge and letting my substantial breakfast digest whilst reading. Or writing this report.
I left the hostel at about 9am but by the time I reached the point the ride was to start, it was raining heavily and was very misty so I went home instead. To make sure the day wasn’t wasted, I took a trip to Boundary Mill to buy a new pair of walking boots. My current pair must be 30 years old and although they look fine, they now leak as I discovered on a couple of walks recently. I’m not really a walker, but I do enjoy a ramble round the many footpaths near us but when I was walking through wet fields last week my feet were squelching after just one mile. I now have a spanking new pair of boots which I’ll be trying out in the coming weeks.
I cycled 129 miles on this trip and climbed 11,240 feet. I also gathered an additional 84 new tiles. Not as many as I’d’ve liked, but not a bad haul. I’ve no more imminent adventures planned, but I don’t think that will last for long.
Later…
Friday 27th October 2023
I was frustrated that I didn’t get to complete the third ride I had planned last week, so today, since the weather was fine and Gee was out with her friend, I decided to go on the sixty-mile ride to grab those missing tiles.
The lay by I’d selected on the A65 was just off junction 36 of the M6, so it was very easy to get to. It was also exactly at the start of the route, and didn’t touch the busy min road at all. In planning, I had failed to notice that the first four miles were almost constant climbing, which warmed me up if nothing else. It wasn’t that cold – about 8° to 10° at the start – but I was glad of the gloves, leggings and neck warmer. I looped round, initially heading in the wrong direction, to pick up three tiles before heading down to Milnthorpe after which I was on very flat roads by the estuary.
Since the plan was to increase my tile cluster, I was very disappointed to discover at the end that I had failed to pick up a tile which would have added a further 20 to my cluster. I’m not sure how I’d missed it when I planned the ride, but it was made more annoying since I rode within a quarter of a mile of it. Never mind, that’s the first objective for another trip to the region.
A Cumberland sausage butty and pot of tea served as lunch on the promenade in Grange. Although Geraldine had come up to Grange by train today (pure coincidence) we never met, even though she was in the same café about 45 minutes earlier.
After lunch, I hugged the coast as best I could, heading down a few culs-de-sac to get to the sea. At one point, I had to explore within a caravan park, but the security guard seemed very relaxed about me entering. Perhaps he thought I’d a caravan there. I had less luck trying to cycle through the grounds of Holker Hall. My route-planning app (Cycle.Travel) suggested that I could ride through, but locked gates and no entry signs told a different story.
The slight rain that accompanied me at this point was very short lived and so, as I passed by Cartmel I was tempted by a café which I knew there, and so made a slight diversion for a welcoming cappuccino. It wasn’t strictly necessary, since I was only 20 miles from the car, but it was a delicious indulgence. There are plenty of tourists here by the Priory, so it was an interesting half hour watching the world go by.
After this trip, I gained an additional 46 tiles (although the cluster is no bigger!) bringing the stats for the three rides to 193 miles, 13,000 feet and over 100 brand new tiles. A new trip to the area between Kendal and Newby Bridge is now being planned – there’re over thirty easy tiles to gather! Watch this space…