Day 27 – Kendal to Lancaster
Actual distance 39.74Km or 24.7 miles (or 1892.4 Lancaster Bombers)
Total Ascent 439m (or 252.3 Eric Morecambes)
Staying at Silverhelme Scout Activity Centre
This morning started with some early adrenaline trying to get the vehicles out of the Great Tower site down a very steep and bumpy track. Jennie even managed to get a back wheel off the ground in the car!
We had quite a trek back to our start point for today, but we eventually made it to Kendal (in the sun!) to start. A few kilometres of smooth cycle tracks greeted us, graduating to a nice quiet road. We happily followed this until we were diverted due to roadworks. Having looked at the gradient of the alternative route we had a quick chat with the workers who let us sneak round the side of the dug up site instead! We then managed to go slightly off route, but with a quick replot from Jennie we were back moving in the right direction again. She even remarkably found a shorter route, but with quite a large hill!
Ollie was struggling a bit as he appears to have sprained his thumb cycling, and asked and asked for a bandage to make it better. A thumb spica seemed to improve matters (we know there’s no evidence for them!) and he was soon back to changing gears and getting up the hills like a mountain goat again.
We stopped for lunch at Milnthorpe and sat in the sun eating our sandwiches on a convenient bench. Hattie spied a Bakery and Cakery and the gluten eaters indulged in the most massive slices of very yummy cake ever- definitely enough to power us on.
Unfortunately after lunch we had some very steep climbs indeed with a 1:7 and a 1:12 to contend with. The sun and the climbing made us all feel a but out of sorts, but the girls more so. We therefore had to stop for a drink and a sit down, and a pub was the only option. Phil’s gears had also started playing up, so he made the most of the pub stop to try and fix them. They appear a little better, but will still require some TLC needed before tomorrow!
For our last 10km we joined the Lancaster Canal tow path; a completely flat but very bumpy track that led us almost directly to our end point in Lancaster. Each time the path narrows to pass under a bridge there are 2 speed bumps and an area of paving stones. Under one bridge there was a rather large rut in the path and we did wonder if one of us would end up swimming!
We arrived a the very lovely, beautiful and tranquil Silverhelme Campsite only to be informed that a local troop would soon descend on it, so we did the decent thing and left them to settle in by going out to eat. A bit of googling and we found a gluten free fish and chip shop in Morecambe- perfect for a Friday. Unfortunately we didn’t read the website closely enough and when we got there we found no GF on a Friday! We therefore went to pub number 2 for a carvery instead!
