Friday 3 September

Left the B&B (John and Sue) at 8.50am. Another hill start! My legs are complaining this morning. Up and up and up, then down. Then repeat. Why oh why do roads take you so far up a hill only to bring you back down and then make you climb again? (A rhetorical question - no need for an answer!) My oxygen starved brain has just worked out why Peter's mileage is a bit smaller than mine - he peddles straight up a steep hill whilst I zig-zag up! We levelled out after a while and were travelling along one side of the valley and could see the M6 motorway on the other side. Above that was the A685 and below a railway. Suddenly a Eurofighter flew in the valley below us (forgot to say yesterday that we were buzzed by an RAF prop plane that Peter tells me was some kind of Italian trainer plane). We got closer to the M6 and passed under it a couple of times. A steam train went puffing it's way up the tracks alongside the motorway and several people were out with their tripods and cameras snapping away. They must have been waiting there for ages ready to capture it. [If you call bird enthusiasts who travel around trying to get a sighting of rare birds, Twitchers, would you call steam train enthusiasts, Smokers?] More 'snake' roads to travel over - up and down hill work, very regular like the back of a cartoon snake. It's more tiring than a straight pull up a long hill. You peddle up one hill then relax down then the muscles ache as you start to peddle hard again. Stopped at the Greyhound pub for tea/coffee. Stopped in Penrith for KFC. Decided to change our route and carry on up the A6 instead of going to Lazonby as the A6 was not too busy (as it runs parallel with the motorway) and it would be shorter and less hilly. As I'm tiring easily today, this sounds like a good plan and worth the loss of a quiet road. We go straight up the A6 towards Carlisle and end up doing more miles than we had intended and also took 6 miles off the original route! Now at Premier Inn. Mileage: 43.92