Today I had the challenges first thing in the morning. My bike-computer (sat-nav with all my routes on) had frozen. I couldn’t find a reset button, I tried pressing both buttons, I tried tapping it, I tried charging it. None of that seemed to work I left it on charge, nothing What would i do without ir? Should i go and buy another one, hoping all the routes were on the SD card and could be transferred, or should i buy a load of maps? I had bought two for Scotland and northern England, which, I haven’t needed and I would need more to a larger scale.

After a while, when still nothing was happening, I pressed both buttons simultaneously and held them down for about a minute. Eureka!

After another good breakfast I left again before 9 only to return 5 minutes later with the key, which was in my back pocket.

Teasi and I finally agreed how to leave Penrith and cycled up a hill. After the next tuning came challenge number 2: Road closed. It was completely fenced off, imminent danger 💀 of collapsing! What should I do now? The only other way in the right direction was a busy dual carriageway. I was on the right hand side and their was a hard shoulder AND a wide grass verge, so I pushed Bonnie (my bike, baptised after my fist SUE4DON) against the traffic to the next exit. This road was going back the way I had just come and within a few kilometres there was a turn to the left. I had rejoined my route!

This was at first on quiet contry lanes, but then turned onto an A road. There was’t much traffic owing to the motorway, which ran parallel, but the cars and a few lorries, passed me at quite a speed. After stopping at a small supermarket for food for lunch, the gradient started to increase. I was prepared for this climb and managed to pedal all the way up and over the Shap. What I wan’t prepared for, was that after a short breathtaking descent it went up ahai, fortunately not so high this time ad I managed that one too. The gradual descent seemed to go on for ever, in fact it could have done as far as I was concerned!

After that came a mixture of country lanes and bike paths. There were a few little hills and when I decided to stop at the next one, there was a bench sitting there all by itself, as if waiting for me!

On the elevation profile it showed a few little peaks. These proved to be extremely steep and I pushed up most off them. By noe it was sunny and I had to take some clothes off, only to put them back on (after the last climb because of the cold wind.

My route then took me on a busy road through a small town and I thought that I would have to stay on it all the way to Lancaster, but there was suddenly a turn-off onto the canal towpath. Because of the rough surface and avoiding going too near the edge ir was slow going, but absolutely flat and absolutely beautiful.

Teasi brought me to my destination with relative ease ad I arrived just after 6 after a hard but very enjoyable day

Tour stats for the day:

88.6 km., 1006 m. ascent, 7:14 bime-time, 8:59 total