Knutsford in good time, more end to enders and Dave's bike upside down again.

Leaving Ben and Vicky's this morning was a bit of a wrench - good food and
good company to be replaced by more A roads...

Breakfast was that of champions - porridge and bacon sandwiches, along with
smoothies, berocca and tea. Fully fuelled we headed off to Preston along
the A6 and managed quite a pace getting to the city entrance in little over
an hour (it's 18 miles from Lancaster) - but then spent the best part of an
hour getting through the city.

Along the way we were passed by a couple more end to enders who started the
same day as us, but expected to finish in 3 days.

With a bit of a tail wind (I'd forgotted what it feels like), we pushed on
through wigan and into warrington - where we had planned to have lunch,
trouble is, it was only 11:45.

We decided to get to knutsford before having lunch but 1 mile away Dave got
another puncture, so we had to take another 15 minutes to sort that out.

It's a mere 25 miles from here to stoke, which we should get out of the way
in. Few hours this afternoon, allowing us a sit down and pint in the sun
this evening.

Ups and downs

A very sunny day meant that my sunburn was getting no better - I couldn't
find any shops open selling suntan lotion, so had to watch my knees getting
redder and redder. We got to carlisle and stopped to get Dave a new tyre.

A short trip to penrith got us there in good time and we decided to plough
on to shap before lunch. We'd heard stories about shap that it was the
hardest climb on the trip, so we set about it. We arrived in shap at about
2:15 and had a good pub lunch. We had each said to each other that the
climb wasn't that bad and we'd had much worse. Talking to the woman at the
bar we discovered that it's actually shap fell that is the highest point -
another 5 miles away, a bit dejected, we trudged on up the a6 up, and up,
and up - back up to about 1400 feet (for the 3rd time this trip) to some
increadible views but absolutely knackered - but then, we got to go down
the other side, which was about 30 minutes of downhill, over 10 miles to
kendal - very fun, apart from the very strong crosswinds which promised to
throw us off the cliff at any moment.

From kendal it was then a loooong 20 miles to Lancaster where we arrived at
about 7 - we kept Ben and Vicky waiting - and were presented with the best
meal of the journey, topped off with a cracking sticky toffee pudding.

A shower that stinged both my sunburn and my cuts livened me up a bit -
Achilles tendon on my left leg is battling my right knee for the most
painful appendage.

Dave just pulled a fast one giving me the option of the airbed (which I
though was the better) but just found out that he now has the big bed. Grr!

Escaping madman Joe and crossing the border

We left ecclefecchan at 8:20 made good progress for the first 10 minutes,
then a car came alongside, the driver shouting 'halt' (who says that?) then
he pulled in front of us and opened his door - I swerved and stopped, Dave
went in to the back of me and we ended in a twisted heap on the floor. It
was Joe from the ecclefeccan inn - apparently we'd forgotted to pay. So we
sorted that out, I regarded by sunburned, strained and now badl scratched
right knee and carried on to gretna.

A little way after we crossed the border - 5 minutes of picture taking and
reflection and we'll be off again.

Glad to be back in England!

The landlord of the ecclefecchan inn is nuts!

A sunny day, hopefully not quite as windy.

We awoke this morning to calls of 'Dave... Phil' from outside the window.
Joe was outside asking if we could come down and let him in because he'd
locked himself out. Dave went down and Joe said he'd been to lockerbie for
a drink (he owns a bar!) he must have been out there all night?

I wonder if we'll get our breakfast for 7:30.

How long does it take 2 men to change a tyre?

The headwinds today were untrue - after making good progress this morning
to lanark, the following 10 miles must have taken us 2 hours.

Because we were making slow progress, we decided to grab some food from a
petrol station and get going.

At abington we met a couple of other bikers who were on their way to hoik
we pointed them in the right direction and they reciprocated. We were
surprised to find at this point we had only 43 miles to go, rather than the
50 we thought. Spurred on, we put our heads down a hot about another 10
miles down (the wind was not quite as bad as before 'lunch'.

We then joined the a74M which had a good quality cycle path, a bit of
shelter from the wind and a massive downhill - not terribly steep, but long
and gave us a bit a rest while still making progress. It was like this all
the way down to balnock where we had only about 15 miles to go to
ecclefecchan. Dave got a puncture around about here, so we stopped to fix
it then got back on the road and stopped after about a mile to do it again,
properly...

We arrived at 6 - considering the headwind and the later start, not too
bad. Ecclefecchan is small and quiet but the hotel bar (ok, it's just a
pub really) was buzzing. The owner (Joe) came out to meet us and put the
bikes away - a really friendly guy and not a little crazy. He's in the
middle of renovating the pub and we had to work our way through the
building site to get to our room, but once there it was very comfortable.

The bar was apparently a rangers bar and everyone was celebrating - thank
god they won today!

Feeling tired, but looking forward to crossing the border tomorrow. I have
a strange bruise on my right calf and sunburned knees but other than that
just enjoyin a well deserved pint.

A brighter day

A continental breakfast inside us, a good sleep and a lot of stretching, we
feel a little better than yesterday (we couldn't have been much worse)

We set off at the very civilised time of 8:40 (only because breakfast wan't
served until 8. We've covered about 25 miles so far, just stopped in lanark
for a quick rest and hoping to get another 25 befor lunch.

A day worth forgetting

Our longest day has also been our coldest, wettest, windiest, highest and
most generally miserable.

After a promising start in pitlochry by 10 we set out towards aberfeldy,
where we needed to pick up the a826 to crieff. We did that 10 miles or so
in reasonable time. When we reached aberfeldy, we headed south towards
crieff hoping for an easy 20 miles before lunch.

We were presented with a 5 mile 7 percent climb which took it out of both
of us - it seemed to go on forever, and we were waiting for the nice long
downhill, but it never really came. Instead we just started going up and
down the terrain, which as it turned out was the top of the mountain range.
None of this would have been that bad if it wasn't for the horizontal rain
and very strong headwinds. The 20 miles to crieff took about 3 and a half
hours.

When we got to crieff we had battered sausage supper (which Dave found out
after a fashion meant all wrapper up together - so we retired to a bench
(with our free drinks from the nice man in the chippy - with the Chinese /
Scottish accent).

We still had 37 miles to go from there and decided to just get on with it,
it was mostly ok, but we arrived in the vicinity tired at about 7 - we then
took about an hour and a half to find the hotel - the only directions we
had involved going on the a80 - basically a motorway without the benefit of
a hard shoulder. So we had to find another route - it took us 2 hours to
cover perhaps 10 miles - not a good average.

Just had time to get changed and go and eat - and now getting to sleep in
preparation for tomorrow - hopefully will be a little brighter tomorrow!