Decided to sack off the B&B’s late, and separately priced breakfast, and make an early start. Best decision ever! Felt good to stretch the legs and also good to be treated with respect by drivers on the main roads. Nice change from yesterday’s 5 mile gauntlet. Today was our planned “painful” day. From looking at the maps, it was either 1 day of main roads & towns, or 2 days of dodging said roads & towns, but still not having a great route. As you may have guessed we decided to “suck it up” and have one “bad” day.

Weather wise it was gloomy clouds and off/on drizzle. Leg warmers the whole way and constant adding/removal of the water proof gilet. Continued with our 2hourly fuelling scheme and made our way through sandwiches and bacon butty’s for the first half of the day. Later on it was massive portions of caramel shortbread and rocky road (both easily twice the size of every shortbread I’ve seen fit sale back home or anywhere else) yum! Thank you Pudding House and Catch 23 for the much needed sugar highs. Strangely, in the first few days I was struggling to eat anything sugary after a few hours on the bike, yet today the stomach was back on form.

Bike still felt great except for the drivetrain which was sounding “cakey” and sloppy after 200+ miles of abuse/crud/rain. Quick hobo clean and tweaking at the youth hostel seemed to make it all good again.

Right, now for the pain points:

  • garmin crashes: 0 (yey!)
  • livetrack failures: 6-8 (lost count)
  • phone crashes: 1 (surprising)

An example of a Northern pub kids play area

James is feeling dejected

Pudding House does great desserts

Another dessert stop at Catch 23

Apparently a disused aqueduct

Nice houses in this town