More on my forthcoming bike ride

[lethargic_man]

I've been posting about my preparations for my bike ride on Facebook, in the hope that posting more will encourage people to sponsor me. (This plan was successful, so I have now happily abandoned my plan to post snarkily about how many pledges I've got from emailing people and posting to my blog, and how many likes I've got from posting to Facebook.) Anyhow, I thought I ought to mirror my posts here too. Here's the latest:

Here's my proposed route, superimposed onto a map of my previous bike rides—or actually, two proposed routes, depending on how whacked I am after crossing the Pennines. Okay, it's a pass through the Pennines, but it's still high enough to be the watershed between the rivers South Tyne and Irthing, and for the vegetation on the valley walls to have switched to the heather found in the uplands. There was heather on the upper slopes of the hills above the Derwent Reservoir too, so I'm hoping if I managed that climb, this one won't be much harder. (My previous bike ride to Haltwhistle, near the watershed, was downhill only: I started by putting the bike on the train! The furthest I've climbed going west was the time I went along the Military Road along Hadrian's Wall as far as Chollerford (the crossing over the River North Tyne).

Bowness, FWIW, is the furthest east point I can get away with claiming is on the west coast. :o) I am going to have to start by cycling there from Carlisle, though: the first train from Carlisle westwards on a Sunday isn't until three o'clock in the afternoon, far too late a start for such a long ride!