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Manchester bikepackers:
Seeing as I work Fri until 8pm and am back there for 9am Sat it's hardly worth going home. Thinking of a few bivvy nights out in the rest of summer if anyone fancies it.
Food from Falafel or similar then late train to Hadfield or Glossop (or Hope, or Todmorden perhaps) to then ride out probably the simplest option. I'd be up with the birds to get back but others not obliged to head back so early.
Let me know if interested.
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Manchester bikepackers:
Seeing as I work Fri until 8pm and am back there for 9am Sat it's hardly worth going home. Thinking of a few bivvy nights out in the rest of summer if anyone fancies it.
Food from Falafel or similar then late train to Hadfield or Glossop (or Hope, or Todmorden perhaps) to then ride out probably the simplest option. I'd be up with the birds to get back but others not obliged to head back so early.
Let me know if interested.
Definitely interested, but a bit time poor over the next few months. If you keep me posted I will pop along as and when I can...
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With only the very basics planned (start point and a wedding to attend on Saturday afternoon...) and no previous biking experience in the Lakes, we set off from Oxenholme on Tuesday night to tackle the route of the Lakeland 200, a self-supported time-trial, knitted together out of bridleways, mountain bike trails, fire roads and a few bogs thrown in for good measure. We’d given ourselves 3 full days riding to get round the loop, with a little bit of riding on Tuesday night to get started (and Saturday morning if required). I’d had a quick look for civilisation around the route and figured that around 60-70km would put us at Coniston after the first day, Keswick for the second and somewhere near Troutbeck on the final night.
I met Jake in Kendal about 7:30 on Tuesday evening and we rolled along to Staverly, the official start of the the loop. We decided to start riding bits of the route and find somewhere to sleep, a brief check of Google Maps before leaving the office earlier in the day looked like crossing over the ‘pincer’ at the start of the route and heading a little way towards Kentmere seemed less densely populated than heading further towards Ambleside and we pottered about looking for a flat-ish spot to sleep, eventually settling for a spot near a disused quarry near Sour Howes. I didn’t sleep great, maybe it was the warmth, annoyingly noisy birds or stressful day at work earlier but on Wednesday morning I was feeling a little worse for wear.
Packing our stuff up in the morning, we couldn’t remember if we were expecting good weather or rain but the grey clouds hiding the top of the surrounding hills it looked like we might be in for a wet day… We rode down to Troutbeck and followed the contour lines along High Skeghyll and Jenkin Crag, catching some great views out over a misty Windermere. Arriving in Ambleside we stopped at Bilbo’s Cafe, ordered breakfast, coffee and juice and I hoped my body would respond well to this, thankfully it did.
As we finished eating, it started to drizzle, waterproofs on and the “do pop all my clothes in a spare dry bag, or will it blow over?” thought crossed my mind, I hoped for the latter but it wasn’t to be.
Leaving Ambleside, you pop back and forth between Windermere and it’s surrounding fells, tarns and woods, heading through Elterwater, Little Langdale and down below Esthwaite Water before finally heading west through Grizedale/Furness Fells on the way to Coniston. The riding was generally good, one little push up some greasy slate and a few short road sections. We found a pub in Near Sawrey (I think…) and stopped for soup, coffee and fizzy pop. The rain eased off as we left but by the time we arrived at the visitor centre in Grizedale it was hammering it down again. We stopped in shelter and made use of the hand dryers for half an hour waiting to see if it eased off, eventually deciding to push on to Coniston. Thankfully by the time we arrived it had dried off and there were a few streaks of blue appearing overhead.
We grabbed some chips and a cheeky half just before starting the push up (literally at the start, there’s a very steep tarmac section!) towards Walna Scar road, dipping under The Old Man of Coniston, finding a place to sleep quite early and finding a place to sleep before the push up to The Cove and then Brown Pike in the morning. We’d ridden about 75km since Tuesday evening (more or less as planned) and climbed around 2000m. The night was calm and clear, no noisy wildlife and other than waking at 3am to discover my Thermarest deflating, a pleasant night’s sleep. We faffed around a bit in the morning and left about 8:30 as the first of the day’s walkers were coming out.
We rolled, and pushed up to Brown Pike and finally set off on part of the descending towards Seathwaite. Jake shot off down to the gate, I crept down (need to work on those descents) with the sound of my howling disc brakes ringing through the valley (another thing that needs some work!). Turning off Walna Scar, we attempted to follow the ‘path’ between White Pike and Caw Moss, in several places it vanished into a bog and following the little purple line on the GPS was the only option to find where it re-appeared on the other side of a grassy bump.
We rode alongside the wood by Dunnerdale Fells in the sunshine, crashing through windy bracken-filled paths and eventually looped back into Seathwaite. We arrived at the pub there about 11:30 and decided to wait for them to start serving food. As we were there, a friendly chap rolled in on his Specialized Full-Sus... and we had a good chat about the local riding. His main advice was to completely almost all our planned route as it was better in reverse, boggy or quite simply un-rideable... as we finished off our lunch and the temperature started to rise, it looked like we were in for a tough day…
Heading out of Seathwaite and through the woods under Hater Fell, the beautiful gravel road fast became a root-and-rock filled bog. Things eased off out of the wood and we rolled down to Hardknott Pass. Things had gone a bit slower than planned and we skipped a short section in Eskdale, opting to take the road to Boot and stop for ice-cream on the way.
Eskdale Moor was very boggy, a lot of on-off riding and pushing as we approached Burnmoor Tarn and spotted a loan kayaker, things got hotter as we rolled along at the base of Sca Fell and I mentally weighed up the pros and cons of a quick swim… Rolling towards Wasdale was a bit hit-and-miss, the track quickly disappeared and it got boggy again before we realised there was a gravel track just below us and we’d been riding down a stream-bed…
The views from the floor of Wasdale Head were spectacular, Wast Water behind you, Sca Fell to one side and Great Gable and Kirk Fell all towering out as you roll towards the pub and campsite. In hindsight we should have stopped here for food as it was probably around 4/5pm and would have given us chance to cool down, refuel and for the temperature to drop a bit, but with no-idea what was ahead, we carried on. The next section, pushing over Black Sail Pass was insane. While 500m of ascent over 2km might not seem like much on paper, the combination of difficult terrain (including one river to cross half way up), blazing sunshine and several fake summits we both really struggled. I could feel the bike getting heavier and heavier and I wondered if I’d accidentally filled the rims with water when crossing the river… I could tell my concentration was going as we neared the top, slipping a couple of times and smacking myself in the face with the handlebars. Had it been wet I don’t think either of us would have managed to get over and it would have been reckless to attempt it. It took over 2 hours to get from the pub to the summit and a further half hour to push down the other side, with no real trace of a path, just rock after rock until we reached the floor of the valley and the UK’s most isolated YHA hut.
Reaching the hut, we were both running out of steam, and having pushed bikes for the best part of 3 hours, we were in two minds about what to do next. Before Black Sail we’d decided Keswick was out of the question and Buttermere was more realistic target. At the hut, we weren’t sure if that would be manageable. We spoke with a guy who’d hiked over from Buttermere that morning and he suggested the route up over Scarth Gap Pass would be fairly steep and unridable but wasn’t that far. After a bit of a breather, we decided we best push on as the next closest signs of civilisation were several miles away at the far end of Ennerdale Water. The push up over Scarth Gap wasn’t too bad, it was steep but the surface was slightly easier on the legs and arms. At the top there were some fantastic views out over Buttermere but weariness was setting in and I don’t think we appreciated them as much as we should have. While the surface was slightly better on the way up, the same couldn’t be said for the way down. The path vanished into a steep broken boulder field and when the surface finally improved, it descended the contour lines faster than I knew my brain could react, I resorted to pushing all the way down being the safest option for me.
We got to the corner of Buttermere and pitched up on the edge of the path at Peggy’s Bridge, too tired to roll on further in search of food or a more concealed spot to sleep, I doubt much would have been open anyway. There were a lot of midges and I ended up being bitten like crazy that, despite tucking myself into a bivy bag as much as possible. We’d been moving for 8 hours that day, covered 47km and climbed another 2000m. Annoyingly a jet decided to fly through the valley around 2am, they make one hell of a noise up there… thankfully the wind had picked up though and blown most of the bugs away and I fell asleep again for another couple of hours. About 5am we got up, packed up and rolled out towards Honnister Pass, having decided we’d take the road all the way to Keswick and then head to Penrith to catch the train as Oxenholme wasn’t looking feasible in our time-constraints.
The ride to Keswick was fantastic, cool, clear and silent. I decided at this point I’d return to the Lakes this year with a road bike, there were plenty of cosy looking campsites, interesting looking pubs and quiet roads sneaking up and out of the valley in all directions. We reached Keswick before much of it had opened, searched for a veggie cafe I’d been told about but couldn’t find (turns out it has changed owner and isn’t veggie any more anyway) and settled for Co-op for a pre-breakfast snack and then found a cafe in the main square for a real meal.
We’d spotted signs for the C2C route and knew this would take us out to Penrith, we quickly joined the old railway behind the leisure centre and spent the rest of the day following this and the back-roads over to Penrith, chatting with other groups of cyclists. Weather was mixed, going from burning sun to rain and a good headwind thrown in to the mix. After a while it did brighten up and was quite warm by the time we arrived at the train station. We hopped on the train and that was that (for me anyway).
It was a good trip and definitely a route to tweak and revisit (over several days), or to lose a lot of kit and attempt in one go… The bike performed well and I know what I need to work on ahead of the Bearbones 200 in October (and I’ll definitely be gearing down if there’s anywhere near that much ascent!). Thanks to Jake for being good company and getting some good pictures along the way. Now it’s time to cover myself in more bite-relief cream and start planning the next adventure...
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three photos of the same plate.
I reckon he had three breakfasts.
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Alpkit Xtra dry bags on 4-for-3, some other handy bits too (paracord, clips, ti spork things)
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Always Riding have started stocking Apidura. Really cheap.
http://www.alwaysriding.co.uk/cycling-bags-232/bikepacking-246
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An evening with Ed Pickup and Mike Hall, might be of interest to anyone Brighton-based and interested in endurance/road bikepacking type crazyness... http://www.velo-cafe.co.uk/new-events/2014/7/28/an-evening-with-mike-hall-and-ed-pickup
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^^ I must try that, may get further.
rhb
atk
JB
BareNecessities
Machine
XavJ
Joe.S
withered_preacher-
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About
Bikepacking - a viable alternative to racks & panniers
Posted by
@edscoble
I took more photos, but they're still not amazing - some decent ones though.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jake254/