Morning again. I slept fairly well finally. I was slightly worried about the dog I could hear outside the window who seemed to bark at everything, but either it stopped or I was too tired to hear it. Breakfast was served at 730 sharp. Our big pile of laundry we left with the guy was done too and I picked through it to find my stuff. This was the first English breakfast stop, wasn't it? I'm still undecided on that whole issue, was it good to stock up on that much of a meal for the later ride, along with the slightly queazy gut feeling, or would I have been much happier with porridge? But it was there in front of me, so I ate it.
Now some people wanted to find the local bike shops and find supplies or spare parts or something like that. Apparently Alex tried on every overshoe in town to find the perfect one. Brenda and I accompany Matt to his bike shop stop, can't remember what he bought, and they fill his water bottle. We hit the drug store too for stuff and Caroline joins us and we head through town to find where the route starts. You know, for a town with three bike shops within a few block radius, the bike lane on the main street was comically narrow. It almost seems suitable for the Warrington site.
The four of us head out of town, stopping a few times to check if we are heading the right direction. We make it through the rush hour traffic and find ourselves finally on a pretty obvious bike path. It runs for a bit along a river and then through a park (a few sheep running through it). It is a pretty nice trail here through a largish city. We miss the part that runs along the side of the road but are still able to find where it leads after that.
Brampton isn't all that far and it is the possible place for a tea stop. We park and wander around town seeing if there is anything that looks suitable, and end up crowding into the place we found originally. A bit too early for lunch so tea and cake here. We are finished and ready to go by the time everybody else pulls up. We hand off our table and head out again. There are lots of ruins and forts to see today so no time to waste sitting around.
First past Lanercost Priory, which we don't stop at. Possibly we might have if Matt had his English Heritage membership at this point, but I have to be satisfied with the view from the road as we circle around it, the back half of it a shell of ruins. Looks pretty though. That leads into a fairly steep climb past Banks and we find our first bit of ruined wall. Bank Hill Turret 52A is up top a high ridge and the view is quite nice. Although, I have to assume that the Roman soldiers stationed here didn't really think too much of it all, being stuck in a cold miserable place on the very edge of the frontier.
Not a lot of the wall left here, but I guess I can get a vague sense of what it used to be like. There were just a few people milling around when we got here but a coach comes and drops a whole big load of people off and then starts a painfully slow process of trying to turn around just as we want to leave and get past it.
Birdoswald is just a bit further up the road and we plan to stop there and have lunch and see the fort. The attendant lets us bring our bikes through the gift shop and park them in the courtyard. Nice, so no need to lock them then, it would have been a pain getting all that stuff off to get to my lock. The foundations of the fort are fairly extensive but there isn't all that much left besides that. Brenda seems a bit disgusted, especially about the walls, "that's all there is of it?" The walk past the back of it and overlooking the valley beyond is well worth it. It is a nice view of River Irthing and we enjoy the nice sunny day, sitting on the edge and looking out at it.
Having seen it all, we head back and get some lunch from the gift shop cafe. A simple sandwich and soup but it is pretty ok. Brenda and Caroline start their tradition of indecisive about which of two deserts, split it in half and have a bit of both. We wander through the exhibit and then are ready to leave as the rest of the group pulls up.
The wall extends a little bit past the fort and we see it head off into the distance as the road turns off the other way. Some annoying Australian woman wants to chat about how some day she is going to get into shape and blah blah blah as I try to get away on my bike. Really, no time to chat, I'm going that way.
We end up getting a bit lost around Thirlwall Castle. We totally miss where the route goes off right before we cross a railroad track and end up climbing a rather steep hill. Or I should say Matt and Brenda do, I was about 3/4 of the way up before Caroline realizes the mistake further behind us and starts yelling. They are just approaching the summit and I have a bad vision of them disappearing over the top and having to go chase them down the other side but they notice in time and back track again and find where we went wrong.
Really, it is a much easier trail then, one of those flat roads beside a railroad track sort of thing. Which is good because we have just a horrendous climb outside of Greenhead. At least the track goes off the main busy road, but it is extremely steep and rocky and the very beginning of it forces you to go through a gate so that there is no way you can actually get any sort of speed to help you up. Not that parts of it were all that ridable anyways.
Next into Haltwhistle, which apparently is the center of Britain. Not a terribly exciting town but they do have a grocery store and we are cooking this evening. We need to get all the stuff for dinner since the rest are fairly far behind and dinner will be extremely late otherwise. Packing it all on the bikes is a bit funny. For some reason, Caroline ends up throwing like 5 cans in her bags.
I end up with a lot of bulky squishy stuff that extends far over the tops of mine. When it starts to lightly rain later on, I worry that open waterproof bags in the rain would be a bit of a disaster, since they would retain the water so well. I have a few extra grocery bags and am able to bunji them on and it holds pretty well. Whoever it was that invented the bunji cord, fricking genius.
So, weighed down by groceries, still with about 15 more miles to go and a number of large hills to go over, we head off. The road really sucks for part of it, unbelievable that it was actually paved considering how bumpy it was. And two large hills to climb. The worst of all, just on top of the last really awful hill, ready for a nice fast ride down, stupid truck blocks the way and we have to stop half way down to at least preserve as much of the ride down as we can. Brenda ahead, goes over the last hill and spots the place first and waves her hands in victory. The Old Repeater Station is a lonely isolated looking place. Although in some ways, it seemed bleaker on the inside. What a really strange place.
The guy has packed 14 into a place that really should sleep about half that. Well, since all the rooms were taken, he has to end up sleeping on the couch that night, or maybe he just passed out there. The kitchen is absolutely jammed packed with junk and we struggle to cook anything given the complete lack of counter space and the impossible logistics of cooking a large batch of chili in the only three tiny little pans we could find. Some can't eat meat, Rob doesn't want anything strange. The salad has to go in a strange plastic container because there really isn't anything else to use.
Very little of that kitchen actually embodied the essence of kitchen-ness. Although, if we wanted to microwave anything, we had quite a choice of machines to choose from. Really, the whole place kind of oozed bachelor pad. Very strange seeing the guy's mail lying on the counters, doctor stuff, bills, etc. After the ordeal, dinner is still nice. Time to crowd into the tiny bedrooms and call it a night.
42 miles for me today. But probably the saving grace of the evening was the fantastic sunset. It was misty, foggy, and colorful. And Gursh joins us at this point, arriving from the east before dinner time. Was this the many puncture day for him? I can't remember, one of them was. Although he didn't get lost once this trip, those of you who read last year's report. That task got passed onto Ian (Dave A gets to chase him down for 1 1/2 miles tomorrow).
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