Recovering (Day 2 part 1)

Ambleside - Borrowdale

The best thing to cure the distaste for off-road riding that we'd accumulated after Monday's drudgery, was ten miles riding on the road along the A591. Oh the scenery wasn't boring, in fact it was rather beautiful, but trudging along a busy tarmac road on knobbly tyres while the traffic builds up behind you is really not my idea of fun. We even had to pull in at one point to let the queue past, the way I remember my dad had to do when we were holidaying in Devon with our overweight caravan and underpowered car. Ten miles of that and I was ready for off-road again.

When we got to the village of Staveley we held a conference. No lunch yesterday was a really bad idea, but 11:30am is surely too early for lunch. But who knows if we'll pass anywhere else? We passed the Staveley Chippy just as they were opening for the day and the bench outside helped sway us.

I ordered first, which was probably a bad idea.
"Curry Chip please"
The woman gave me a blank look.
Then I remembered, this is England. Never use two words when ten will do.
"Please may I have a portion of chips, with some curry sauce?"
That sorted it, and Martin ordered a chip. Sorry, a portion of chips. Strangely they didn't take American Express, so Martin paid from his wad of notes.

I'd be interested to hear from any girls reading. When a bloke sees you walking down the street and his head turns to follow your progress, how do you feel? do you take it as a compliment or do you think his ogling's rude? The reason I ask is that as we sat and ate our early lunch, I was ogling. Iwas ogling a carbon fibre singlespeed fixed gear with custom semi-dropped bars. beautiful. (oh, that's a bicycle by the way) but when I eventually got around to looking at the fellah in the saddle, I could see that he was ogling our bikes too. I nodded and he rode on. Next thing I knew he'd turned and come back.
"nice frame bag" he said (now there's a chat up line if you ever need one!)
and we chatted for a while. He actually worked at Wheelbase in the village, so after we'd finished eating we headed round that way for some advice.
With his help, we mapped out a route that was a good mix of B and C roads to Garnett Bridge, followed by bridleways as far as the motorway. Then at Tebay, we could decide how to get to Kirkby Stephen, where we were booked in for the night.

The route to Garnett Bridge was probably some of the most pleasant road cycling I've ever done. The long steep ascent to Gilpin Bank was probably hard work, but what I remember about it was how enjoyable it was to ride on the quiet country roads, with great views and interesting details all around. Then the ride down the other side to Garnett Bridge was a blast. We probably weren't going that fast, but it was a great fun ride.

We stopped briefly at Garnett Bridge to eat our chocolate croissants from the Youth Hostel, and began the off-road section of the day.



We began riding up a short steep bridleway to meet with the A6. Most of this section to Borrowdale followed the A6 quite closely, but apart from a mile or so, we were sticking to laneways and bridleways that ran parallel to the main road.

Being unfamiliar with English ways, I was surprised to find that many of the bridleways are just fields with a gate at either end, with little or no track marked out. Everything was well signposted though and it wasn't difficult to navigate. The biggest issue was that grass is one of the most physically draining surfaces for cycling. you seem to have to pedal twice as far to go the same distance on grass as you do on hard surfaces.

There are two clear routes from Borrowdale to the M6. The Breasthigh Road goes over the top of the mountains, while the other route follows the valley, coming out further south. The weather looked like it was going to close in within the next couple of hours, so that, coupled with the fact that the easiest place for a bicycle to cross the M6 looked to be further south, helped us decide to ride along the valley.