Day: June 9, 2016

18 miles

511 metres climbing

Cumulative miles 646

Poor Martin woke up this morning with one of his awful migraines, he couldn’t cycle , indeed couldn’t really manage standing up. Fortunately this happened at Maggie’s who was a real star, was kind and looked after us and gave us the run of her house, even after she had to go out, so he could stay in bed.

Maggie and Gayle

Maggie’s lovely garden and view from the summer house

Fortunately too we had a very short day planned, although a somewhat fierce climb over Shap Fell. He slowly improved and we set out about 3. This area of the Lakes is lovely, gentler than the big fells further North and very green. The climb up Shap Fell was OK: steady, and we just cranked down the gears and snailed our way over. It is clearly a popular cycling climb as we were overtaken by several fast cyclists on road bikes, in some cases several times as they went up and down while we plodded up the once! Maggie advised us on a way avoiding the initial steep bank up the lane and we went over on the A6 with a Southerly wind helping. This is the first ( and possibly only) time we are planning to use an A road but it is in fact quiet, scenic and the alternatives are all much longer and fiercer.

Borrowdale, but not the well known one. From the A6 South of Shap Fell

The top was breezy and beautiful, the wildflowers here bog cotton and tormentil and the old Roman road running along the ridge.

Then the long downhill to Shap and left towards Bampton with beautiful views of the fells receding into the haze

And so to Chris and Caz where we have had a lovely evening talking about everything , generally setting the world to rights and being very well fed and comfortably rested.

32 Miles

Climbing: 404 metres

Cumulative miles 628

We had a very comfortable night with Griff and Jess. We were very impressed that they got up at the crack of dawn to go to the gym …. we stayed in bed until a reasonable hour.

Lancaster was a very cycle friendly town and we were able to whizz past the traffic jams on the cycle lane and down to the Lancaster canal. This canal was built in 1797 because the navigation on the Lune was so restricted by tides and it used to go all the way to Kendal. It crosses the Lune on a very handsome aqueduct built by a man called Rennie and has a nice tarmacced surface …. to start off with.

Aqueduct over the Lune

On the aqueduct

We stopped for coffee at Bolton le Sands with Carol and Arnold, Gayle worked with Carol in South Manchester many years ago. It was lovely to sit in the crows nest at the top of their garden and catch up with each other.

With Carol and Arnold

Back on the canal, Sustrans route 6 follows it until Carnforth and then takes little lanes, however a reasonable towpath carried on and so we opted to stay on the canal. It was very beautiful, green, full of flowers, birds, lovely views over the fells as it takes an elevated line contouring around the side of the valley. It did get quite bumpy as the tarmac ran out and the navigable part ended where it bisected by the M6. It does continue as the ‘Northern Reaches’ in many ways even more lovely as it becomes somewhat wild , the locks turn into waterfalls and the surface covered with waterlilies.

On the Lancaster canal

The locks become waterfalls in the Northern Reaches of the canal

Lovely views over the countryside

Herons

Cows

Looking down onto Holme from the canal

There are ambitious plans to reconnect this segment with the main canal network but it will invovle getting around several crossings of the motorway so a bit of a wish at present

Level with Milnthorpe, the gates turned into stiles, not bike friendly so we abandoned it and carried on on small lanes to Kendal and then Burneside where we are staying with Maggie, a friend with whom we went ski touring in Norway, 27 years ago. She lives in an beautiful spot and we sat soaking up the evening sunshine, bowling cricket balls for two small boys and admiring their snails over tea, all very idyllic.