The Plan

Here’s the plan to follow the Pennine Cycle Way combined with some Pennine Bridle Way and an added loop into the Lake Distract. Why not add in the Lakes, when you go North might as well see as much as possible?

When trying to select another longer tour to go on as practise for the Big Adventure I wanted a route with climbs and hills. I also pick a time of year which was not going to be horrific and cold but neither was likely to be perfect all the time. I looked through the national cycle routes and other places for ideas but the Pennine Cycle Way looked perfect and had good train stations at each end. Combined with the Bridle Way would give me a really good shake down of my bike and gear.

Originally I had planned to do the route south to north but looking into the trains there was a rail works on the weekend I would be aiming to come home so switched it around. I booked my train up there in advance but left the return one unbooked as I had no idea where I might actually get too. (good thing too, it so happens).

25/09/2019

Packed up the bike and rode it into work, always a good test ride. Caught the train after work to travel up to Berwick-Upon-Tweed, the start point for my adventure. It is always fun taking the fully loaded bike through London especially as it tends to tie in with rush hour. Obviously you can’t take a full sized bike on any forms of public London transport so riding it is. I have ridden through London a few times and it isn’t too bad especially the route from Waterloo to King’s Cross, but I think this was the first time I have done it with out getting a bit lost. And it is not all out of the way of London traffic so have to have some guts to hold your ground.

The train ride up was chilled and it was a nice carriage for the bike so I did not have to worry about trying to hang it up. Read and chilled out on the journey. Unloading at Berwick was fine but sadly I forgot my Cycle Touring Festival Bottle 🙁 so that took an extended trip to Edinburgh to never be seen again.

Made my way through Berwick and found my Warmshower host Colin house with no trouble. Was lovely to know I had somewhere to stay with no fuss that night and Colin was so understanding about getting there late. We ended up chatting for ages which was awesome and we had met at the Cycle Touring Festival that year. But it was eventually time to sleep.

26/09/2019 – Day 1

So as always the reluctance to get out of bed struck again! But I excused it with myself as it was the first day of a holiday so I could have a lie in! When I did finally get up I spent ages chatting with Colin who was an amazing host. We talked about bikes, swapped adventure stories and general cycling mindsets. It was great to share time together, he also let me his map for the first section of the cycle way which was a nice addition to compliment the OsmAnd+ map and routing I use on my phone.

I set off at about lunch time and it was a nice day, not hot but the sun was shining. It was really fun to get moving and be at the start of this grand adventure :D. I stopped off at Norham Castle (the most dangerous place in England*) and explored the ruins which were really impressive and no one else was around so I could poke around as much as I liked.

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I saw a couple of other castles and stopped for a tea break, was really wanting some tea but struggling to find somewhere to stop until then. I made sure to get some supplies before I ended up to far off the beaten track. When I looked for a camp spot I found a really nice one tucked in an area of pine trees, the only down side was there were loads of pheasants… I mean loads and every time I moved around they made such a racket… But I cooked myself a nice dinner with the supplies I had. I think it was pasta with a tomato sauce with courgette and onion. Cooked on my little beer can stove. I was proud of my self as I cooked a proper meal, even if it was pasta based. Then settled in for the night and slept like a log… Other then having to pee in the night, so annoying getting up and out of the tent!

*In the 15th Century 😛

27/09/2019 – Day 2

Got a good nights sleep and had some brekkie before packing everything away. It wasn’t too late a start but no sooner had I turned the corner then I found the ford….

Luckily there was a foot bridge so I could walk over the river and not get soaked right at the start of the day or risk getting washed off the bike.

On the second day of riding it quickly became pretty apparent that off road cycling was not going to be possible fully loaded and with the gearing I had. I was struggling on the gravel tracks that were easy and any hill with a bit of a slope… So I ended up pushing the bike up more then I would have liked (This soon became the trend for the trip…). So I chose to stick to just the cycle way and give the bridle way a miss on this trip.

I then stopped at a large river to try out my new water filter and boil the eggs I had brought before I broke too many more. The filter worked really well but it didn’t remove all the colour from the water. Drank a litre of it and it didn’t make me sick so I will take that as a win! Was a nice place to chill.

Worked on ticking off the kilometres and then popped into a pub for some warms, tea and a break. Sadly it started to rain so got kitted up in the waterproofs, trying out using waterproof mittens for the first time which seemed to work well. But I was getting wet and the rest of my waterproofs did not seem to be doing very well 🙁

I stopped in a place called Bellingham to find a camp site to hopefully be able to warm up and not have to worry about finding a wild camp spot. It had a drying room with a wood stove which needed wood added and tending to ensure drying of clothes. I hid out in the drying room to be warm and cooked my dinner on the top of the stove… very very slowly but it was a different experiment. Getting really warm meant climbing into the sleeping bag was not bad at all 🙂