Author: Rob Ainsley

The hardest day, up to the highest point on the C2C (606m), but some spectacular roof-of-the-Pennines scenery, and lanes threading their way round stark hills where the traffic jams consisted of sheep. There was plenty of climbing up to Nenthead – a town, not a term of abuse. On the border by the weatherbeaten sign…

Damp, cool, level riding along another railway path out of Keswick, criss-crossing the River Greta in wooded valleys. There was some cumbersome wiggling on side roads to avoid the main road into Penrith; we lunched on baked spuds in a caff in the market. I was struggling up the long hill to Hartside, and its…

[I’ve done the Coast to Coast – the 140-mile cross-country trek from Whitehaven (or Workington) to Sunderland (or Newcastle) – four times. This was the first time, in 1997, three years after it opened.] We drove up from Bath and left the car in a street in Jesmond, then took a train to Whitehaven with…