Lots of hills and headwinds today, but I didn’t swear once. That once was at about 4 o’clock. From the hostel it was all downhill into Whitby, some 100m away. Very steeply downhill, as you can see. The road, Donkey Track, is marked ‘Unsuitable for Motors’. Indeed. At the bottom, this photo suggests that the…
Category: Coast to Coasts
F2B 1: Flamborough to Whitby
This is the latest Rhyming Coast to Coast: Flamborough to Bamburgh, F2B. Pedants among you will protest that it isn’t a proper Coast to Coast as it doesn’t cross the country, and merely follows a shoreline. But they rhyme and it looks fun, and I’d rather be happy than right any day. I’ll tell you…
Britain 13 (D2S 3): Clatteringshaws Loch to Stranraer
A glorious morning, and what a view to wake up to: the mirrorlike waters of Clatteringshaws Loch in the heart of Galloway Forest Park, right there in front of my tent (picture). And all mine: not another soul for, literally, miles. Not quite mirrorlike enough to see my haggard reflection clearly, which after two weeks…
Britain 12 (D2S 2): St Mary’s Loch to Clatteringshaws Loch
It rained all night, and it was a miserable cold squelchy start from the lochside campsite. Even the mad hen was taking shelter. But with a hefty tailwind, the long downhill into Moffat was a delight (picture). As was Moffat itself, a handsome town with a good line in cherry trees and Scotch pies. Outside…
Britain 11 (D2S 1): Dunbar to St Mary’s Loch
So, this morning I left Dunbar (picture). A friendly small town that acts as the administrative centre for the agricultural area and a dormitory town for Edinburgh, it’s the home of John Muir, who established the conservation movement; Belhaven Brewery; a nuclear power station; a fishing harbour; and a cement factory. A mixed economy, I’d…
W2W 3: Barnard Castle to Sunderland
The pub breakfast, served by a friendly lass wearing a dressing gown and a smile, was a fryup that could have set up a bodybuilder for a cage fight, or even a touring cyclist for a sixty-mile jaunt to the end of the W2W. I stopped to gawp at the remarkably impressive Bowes Museum, an…
W2W 2: Kendal to Barnard Castle
The fire alarm jolted me awake at 7am, but it quickly became apparent it was a toast-related false alarm. At least it got me out of bed in time for early breakfast – and yes, the toast did have a taste of charcoal – and I was on the road by eight. I like supporting…
W2W 1: Barrow to Kendal
The Walney to Wear, aka W2W, is the most obscure of the standard Coast to Coast routes. Roaming 155 hilly and often remote miles from Barrow to Sunderland, it’s tackled mainly by nerdy completists and people with nothing better to do. So of course I was riding it. My early morning train from York rolled…
B2J 3: Edmundbyers to Jarrow
Most of today’s short concluding run was on NCN14, the well-surfaced railtrail (picture) that takes grateful C2Cers downhill from Consett into Newcastle. It has two sorts of ‘Cyclists: Slow’ signs. One is because there are narrow barriers coming up at a road crossing, in which case you should slow down; the other also says ‘Give…
B2J 2: Patterdale to Edmundbyers
Alongside Ullswater (picture) to start with, and a visit to see Aira Force, the waterfall area which claims to be the inspiration of Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’. Clearly he, like me, beat the tourist rush by coming here at 7.30am. Outside Penrith I joined the C2C (Coast to Coast) Sustrans route. In…