Overland to Carlisle – part two

The pints were served until 0100, to support the snooker tournament… but we were asleep well before that.

Well rested, the next morning, we realised how much yesterday’s ride had built up our appetites, and The Blackcock Inn rose to the occasion once again. Why are you laughing?

The granola was delicious, and I sensibly went for poached eggs and bacon, rather than the full English which was calling to me from the menu. Over breakfast, we chatted with the owners about the Tour Divide, Highland Trail 550, and Transcontinental, as well as their swimming exploits in Guernsey, marshalling the 20km swim in Kielder Water, and elsewhere. They’ve got big plans for the inn – it was a fantastic place to stay.

Has there been a jubilee here recently or something?

Well-fuelled, we retrieved our bikes from the garage, faffed around a bit, and set off back along the road on the South of Kielder, before peeling off into the forest.

We’d seen a lot of trees felled by Arwen already, and were alert to the risk of them still blocking trails, especially when we were descending. It was here that we first started to be hampered by them, even though the trunks had been cleared from the trail. There’s clearly so much for the park authority to do, that they really just cleared the worst and as long as the heavy plant could move over the remnants, that was job done.

For us on our gravel bikes, this made for some fun technical riding (and falling off!) Even at little more than walking pace, you can feel like an absolute hero making it through some line that looks a bit sketchy!

Honestly, we walked a lot. It was beautiful though, and very different to the riding from yesterday. Slow, but that’s the thing about off-road riding, at least in the UK, you really don’t know what the path will be like until you get there, and even when you’re on it, any corner you turn can bring a fresh surprise.

Fortunately, the midges stayed away.

We cleared the forest, and came to wider, well made gravel trails which we could easily ride through the more open moonscape which forestry works had created. We didn’t see anyone, for hours.

These trails took us on and on, rising and falling with the landscape as we thought it would from the profile. It was hot, for the north of England, but the gentle northerly breeze, that same wind which had done so much damage to the forests, kept us cool when we stopped.

We did eventually bump in to someone. He was walking Britain end-to-end over three stints, raising money for Multiple Sclerosis charities. Seeing people walking long distances always makes me grateful to be on a bike… I enjoy long distance walking, but it takes a toll on your body in a way that cycling just doesn’t, and when you’re in a rough patch, it can take a very long time to get through it.

As we got to the end of the national park, the landscape started to change. Forest gave way to sheep fields again, and the gravel to country roads. Nothing makes you grateful for smooth tarmac like 30km of up-and-down gravel, much as I enjoy riding off road!

We were more able to look at the view as we rode this, seeing the line of Hadrians Wall and the changes in the limestone landscape. Lunch in Haltwhistle, with half a beer and a bit of faffing around.

We knew we had a non-stop 35km climb to Alston for the afternoon… but we didn’t really know what it would be like. It turned out to be perfect: old railway line, with a good gravel surface and plenty of shelter from the midday sun. It went on and on, so easy that I kept thinking it was going downhill, but Ben assured me/swore blind that it was still going up.

He was right, but I still don’t really believe him.

Lumbley viaduct was a highlight. We did ride over it, despite the railway being blocked by someones garden afterwards (I don’t really understand why they would ever sell sections of the track like that!) The climb down the steps was… fun…

Alston came, with a long, lazy dinner of chicken and ham pies, followed by ice cream. We reminisced about the last time we were there, when Ben was really suffering after the Hartside climb on our three-day Coast to Coast ride in 2018, Ben’s first long-distance ride, and probably my first multi-dayer.

The Great North Trail had been wonderful, but we chose the road for the last 10km, looking forward to our beds at Garrigill. This was no great hardship: they were lovely and quiet, and we arrived five minutes before the rain. Not that a shower would have been bad, we were very hot, but it was good to keep the bikes and our gear all dry.

After we were all clean and refreshed, a Pennine Way walker joined us in the bunkhouse. He’d been over Great Dun Fell, and had a familiar-looking hobble, which I recognised from my own weekends on the tough Pennine Way. We shared some whisky and gels with him, and as Ben swithered on the route choice and whether we should go up to the heights or save our strength for the night wide, we mentally prepared ourselves for going over the top the next day.

Overland to Carlisle

Our liminal ride to the midsummer sunrise was the destination. Ben booked the three days before that to come away. A promising opportunity for a big ride, and some stories to tell!

Ben had recently bought a gravel bike, and I’m always looking to take my trusty Whyte Suffolk further and further from the rough UK roads it was designed for, so I was firmly looking for an off-road route we could take to the start in Carlisle. A double-century for the Ride to the Sun would certainly be fun, but we could do more than that.

We had some time to get ourselves and our bikes there from Edinburgh, so in March, I spent most mornings pouring over the map to find the most interesting three-day pregame ride I could. Until an email announcing the recently-launched Great North Trail landed in my inbox.

Off-roading down the spine of Britain

The whole eight-hundred mile length of the route is thoroughly explained in Cycling UK’s route guide. The route that CUK have designed, and more importantly, campaigned for access to, takes you to some truly beautiful and interesting places, keeping off the road almost the whole time. They advise that the route is best ridden on a hardtail or gravel bike. They’re not wrong.

There’s something enchanting in reading about off-road routes; I found myself studying the guide closely, tracing the route into a planner, and raring to get out of the house and ride it straight away. Parts three and four of the trail cover the North Pennines, Kielder, and the Scottish Borders, in that order – as a whole, it’s written South to North to go with the prevailing wind in the UK. Fortunately for us, we would have the wind behind us even though we were going the other way.

Our Great North

We wanted to keep our rides manageable. Both of us were pretty focused on the Ride to the Sun, a hundred miles with the added unknown of overnight tiredness. We didn’t plan to do big distances on the way there, so aimed for 80-90km per day in the plan. To save riding routes I’m more familiar with, we immediately decided on taking the train to Tweedbank, so we were starting in the Borders, not Edinburgh.

Off to a good start… but we weren’t camping, so we were still hostages to the available hotels, bunkhouses, and hostels that we could find on the route.

This… was more of a problem than I expected. Our original plan had us spending the first night in Kielder, sleeping at the Youth Hostel which was totally marked on Komoot… and was also totally closed down and demolished!

Booking the accommodation was challenging, especially to try and keep it to a budget. Most places were fully booked, even though we were booking in April, and many of those which weren’t had a minimum of two or three nights stay. “Credit card touring” is less straightforward than it sounds!

We did find places though: an inn in Falstone, a community-run bunkhouse in Garrigill, and the old reliable, Premier Inn in Carlisle. Now, we could firm up our route.

What we thought we were doing

Day 1: 108km, 60km unpaved, a big scary-looking gravel hill at the end.
Day 2: 70km, 35km unpaved, a lumpy start out of Kielder, followed by steady gentle climbing for the second half of the ride.
Day 3: 74km, only 10km unpaved, but crossing the moor to the highest paved road in Britain, Great Dun Fell, at 835m. Flat or downhill after that.

The first day was always going to be long, and with that big hill towards the end, pretty tiring. But we had two shorter riding days, and a rest day, to recover. “It’ll be fine!“

The second day was fully on the Great North Trail, with Hadrian’s Wall marking the transition from the national park, to a long climb out of Haltwhistle to Alston on an old branch railway line.

Finally, we would summit the highest paved road in Britain, and then coast downhill pretty much all the way to Carlisle. That’s definitely how English roads work. For sure.

What we were actually doing

As the ride came closer, we worked on our bikes, our fitness, and getting the food and drink we needed sorted. Our friends kindly agreed to take care of my usual school-run duties, and everything was ready.

The train strikes loomed, threatening Ben’s ability to get to Edinburgh, but a change of plans to a long drive from Gloucester saw him right. The day came to go and jump on a train, or to enact our backup plan of adding another 60km to that first day route, and we set off.

We were soon glad that we didn’t add 60km to the ride… but after the first 10km, we had a cake and coffee stop anyway: we weren’t racing, after all!

As we wove our way through the Borders towards the GNT route, we found some pretty difficult terrain. Grass tracks were certainly not all ridable, and my chain replacement the night before revealed a derailleur issue that needed repeated bodging with zip ties.

Lunch in Hawick was a delicious, if non-traditional bagel: seeded, filled with pulled bbq pork and macaroni cheese, with a side of superhero chat with a local six-year-old, who seemed to know everyone but we weren’t totally sure who or where his parents were.

Progress was slow. Sunglasses were lost. Hills were re-ridden in a fruitless search, and the day started to get away from us. Some time in the late afternoon, we realised that we weren’t actually half way yet, and even though there was lots of daylight, we did actually need to get a bit of a wiggle on. Some of the off-road was replaced with road, especially when we found the old railway was blocked and not ridable. Eventually, we got to the big hill which we worried about from the beginning… and just rode up it.

It was fine. A little tough, but nothing like as bad as we’d thought, just a steady pace in a low gear, and we got there when we got there. The curlews kept us company, and the Borders opened up behind us as we climbed, with a fantastic view from the top.

We crossed the border with England at the Bloody Bush, and the standing stone there, and started a fun single track descent to Kielder Water. It seemed like it would be really difficult to actually pedal this on a gravel bike, if you were going uphill: the track was so narrow and deep that you’d have had constant pedal strikes, but on the way down, it was plenty of fun.

It was getting late, so we made another route alteration, going around the south of Kielder Water rather than the north. I’d ridden these trails before and knew they’d be fun, but we were thinking about the time, and getting to the inn at a reasonable hour, and that I’d told them we’d arrive at 4… so it was fairly rapid fun!

We arrived at the inn just after eight o’clock… which was when they stopped serving food! Fortunately, they made us each a great big burger, which felt well earned, along with our pints.

Through the Timeless Night

18:28 – it wasn’t deliberate that we had exactly ten hours to get to Cramond before sunrise. We rolled out of Carlisle and into the evening, leaving the graffiti art convention in the Bitts Park sunshine, and top-notch-nachos in our wake, with a clear number in mind. It did feel a little surreal to be starting out on Ride to the Sun 2022!

The road slipped under our wheels easily for those first few hours, with the tailwind keeping us going through the showers and into the gloaming. Ben had to quiet his guts with liberal use of flapjack, but we quickly marked up Ecclefechan, Gretna (“I wonder when we cross the border, and will it be marked?” – Duncan, on _leaving_ Gretna! Clearly I wasn’t singing Flower of Scotland loudly enough…), Lockerbie, and Beattock by the time sped into Moffat, everyone was in a pretty good place.

It wasn’t 10pm yet, but the clock is always ticking. Linda ran a tight ship at the Best Pizza and Kebab House, and soon we were running on lasagne, fish and chips, and full-gas Coke… even getting a table inside to escape the dreaded midge!

Despite our no-faff stop, the 22km/h average we’d built up had been whittled down to little over 19, and we still had the Devil’s Beeftub climb to go. Still, we took the time to wrap fairy lights around our frames.

Nothing was for certain, except the sun slipping away, as the bats played in our headlights leaving the valley. The red lights strung out ahead, the white behind, both curling around the curves of the hill, and we settled in to the rhythm of the gentle gradient, knowing this was our only significant climb of the night.

A sense of timelessness crept over us as our navigation screens slipped into the darkness, and the rain clouds closed in from behind. We donned waterproofs only a little late, and as we neared the top, a spectacular, but thankfully singular, fork of lighting illuminated the summit ahead of us. As the thunder rolled away, we heard the pipes, and knew we were almost there.

She played on the top of that hill for hours, with a friend to hold an umbrella which must have done little against the rain and even less against the chill we were all feeling, but it was so welcome to the riders getting over the route’s main obstacle.

By now, our view to the north eastern horizon was clear of big hills, and we started to see the first hint of the oncoming dawn we were racing. It would be our companion for the rest of the night; the sky never did fully darken.

We shot down the hill, not really sure where our next stop, The Crook Inn, actually was. We almost stopped just 250m from it, but as we rounded the last corner, the lights and lasers were unmistakable. This long-time boarded-up pub witnesses this strange event each year with a Cyclorave, and despite the rain putting a real chill into us on the descent, we still appreciated the DJ’s work… we just showed it with star jumps to the beat, and sharing out and putting on every piece of clothing we had between us!

Our efforts on the hill had only cost a couple of km/h, but we were down to 16.8 and knew that if it dropped below the magic 16, it would be hard to get back now. Bananas inhaled, bottles filled, we pressed on into the next 70 km knowing we wouldn’t find any more facilities until the Esso at the Embra bypass…

The road signs started to have more-achievable looking numbers on them, but the darkness was tricksy, some of those miles felt much slower than others, often without an obvious reason. They never went up, which we were thankful for, as we skipped along the road, passing and being passed by the same few groups of riders, recognising their faces, only half-lit by reflected headlights.

The occasional pelotons which thundered past with angry-sounding cries of “MOVING OUT!” and “MIDDLE!” became less frequent as we steadily munched up the remaining distance. We were glad to have them out of sight, after an especially alarming one saw a car try to overtake the 60km/h peloton at the same time as it passed us. The horn blared, but you can’t stop a group quickly from those speeds, and they shouldn’t have had to.

Fortunately, everyone was fine.

Coming closer to Edinburgh, my disorientation increased, which I didn’t expect. We were riding roads I felt like I’d ridden before, but couldn’t recognise, with unfamiliar village names I’d never paid attention to in the past. We saw the outlines of hills to the north and west of us which could only be the Pentlands, but looked completely unfamiliar as silhouettes of the tops. Our energy and motivation dropped as we created each bump in the profile, which we felt sure would bring Arthur’s Seat and the city lights in to view… but didn’t.

Until one did! As expected, this sight just before Penicuik put fire back in our legs, and it all felt easy again. The chatter with fellow strangers on the road picked back up, and we shared our surprise at how much difference it made. The streetlights helped us navigate the worsening roads, though Ben endeavoured to diligently call out every pothole in Edinburgh regardless.

We shot past the Esso garage, not feeling the need for a fill up, and continued up to the top of Fairmilehead, where everything was laid out ahead of us, not least the long, fast descent through the Victorian suburbs.

Weaving down the empty roads, we spread out, only to bunch back together for the surreal traversal of Lothian Road after kicking out time, confused groups of clubbers and cyclists each wondering what on earth the other was doing. It resolved itself in mutual good-natured (if obscene) heckling and disbelief, a very appropriate coda to this whole excursion.

Queensferry Road took us gently but quickly out to Cramond, and after a short, staged, wait to let our welcoming party make their equally-adventurous way along Silverknowes Esplenade, we flowed down past the kirkyard, out to the harbour, where the sun was about to rise over low-tide.

04:26 – two minutes in hand, but no rush or panic.

Cheers to Fraser, Gary, and all the volunteers and supporters who made this happen. We will absolutely be back!