Coast to Coast bike ride
We arrived in Whitehaven yesterday ready to start our 3 day coast to coast ride. This is a ride of about 140 miles from Whitehaven on the west coast to Sunderland on the east coast. There are 3 of us doing it together - me, Claire and my friend Matt. After some discussions and research we decided that we didn't want to camp, and we didn't want to carry all our overnight stuff on our bikes. So we booked through a company called Trailbrakes, who have booked B&B accommodation in cyclist friendly B&Bs, are picking our bags up each morning and dropping them off at our next B&B, and will pick us and our bikes up from Sunderland and take us back to Whitehaven on Sunday. It's a bit more expensive than organising it ourselves but so far the B&Bs have been great and everything has run smoothly.
We got to Whitehaven at about 6pm yesterday, stowed our bikes in the secure bike room, and headed into the town for some dinner and a few drinks. There weren't many places open but we found a Wetherspoons where we got a big dinner and a pint of beer for £7 each. We limited ourselves to 3 drinks and got back to the B&B at about 10pm, after a slight detour to admire the exquisite Georgian architecture on Roper Street that was mentioned in the coast to coast book. We'd already failed to notice it on Lowther Street earlier, but as we were on the way to the pub that's understandable.
We'd booked our full English breakfast at 7.30am, and were a little perturbed by our host Dave's surprise that we wanted to leave it so late to set off, but we chose to ignore him as there were only "light bites" available before 7.30. After just the right amount of breakfast we collected our bikes and set off down to the start point at the harbour.
The coast to coast route starts next to a sculpture thing at the bottom of one of the slipways by the waters edge. The tradition is to dip your back wheel in the sea in Whitehaven, which we did despite our concerns about falling into the sea in our slippy cycling shoes (sorry, but this didn't happen. I know it would have made good reading but rest assured we got soaked later). It was throwing it down with rain by this point so there was no one around to take a group photo so we had to take it in turns.
The route started off through the town and residential areas towards a disused railway line. The first 10 miles or so were easy going with a very gradual incline but after that things started getting a bit more challenging. The main challenge of the day (apart from the rain) was the crossing of the Whinlatter Pass, which is an altitude gain of about 800 feet over about 2.5 miles. There was a very short step section at the beginning which took us by surprise and we all had to get off and push as we were all in the wrong gear. Then there was another almost as steep longer section, of which Claire was the only one to cycle the whole way up (albeit slower than Matt and I bike/walked it). Then the gradient got a bit more gradual, and before we knew it we where whizzing down the other towards Keswick.
We stopped for lunch in a cheap and cheerful cafe in Keswick, which was at about the 30 mile mark. Strangely, we weren't really hungry but we had a sandwich and a hot drink each whilst attempting to dry off. We must have looked a pretty sorry sight. My top was fairly dry but Claire and Matt were soaked. We all felt like we were wearing full nappies in our sodden cycling shorts and Matt's phone had got wet and died.
We had about 20 miles to do after lunch, and the weather had improved a bit so it wasn't raining all the time. On paper it looked a lot easier than the morning's route, but on tired legs there still seemed like a lot of hills. The last few miles were mainly downhill on good roads so we covered them quite quickly.
We arrived at our B&B in Penrith at about 3.30pm and were pleased by the owner's surprise that we had got there so quickly. After a bit of chain lubing and hot showers all round we've all had a rest and are looking forward to dinner. We will be avoiding having too many drinks as tomorrow looks to be an even tougher day as we cross the Pennines.
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