Ride 049.

Date:   14th May 2005            Distance: 17 miles

In the blink of an eye it’s the last day of our brief sojourn around the Cumbrian fells, another fine day too, requiring some clothes shedding even before we left the village for a circular route around Blencathra. The same start as TTB047, weary limbs reluctantly got us up to the Blencathra Centre and along the track on the side of Blease Fell, above Glendeterra Beck. By way of a change, we kept on going and made our way to Skiddaw House, an abandoned Youth Hostel in possibly the remotest location in the whole Youth Hostel network. Sat outside we chatted with some pleasant and amiable walkers, a change from the snarling strollers of Loughrigg Terrace yesterday.  

After a bit of a breather we hung a right turn, down into the valley heading toward Mosedale and plodded along the well-defined track. Parts of this are good but some stony sections and a bit of bog made for an interesting few miles until we picked up the tarmac road at the bridge over Grainsgill Beck. A pleasant run, unfortunately all on tarmac brought us to Mosedale, where the old Quaker Meeting House is no longer a café, devastating – this closed café business seems to be a recurring theme of late on Terra Trailblazers rides. Most of us are process operators, more than an hour without hearing a kettle go on and we start to feel a bit anxious. 

We rode onto Mungrisedale and passed (passed?) the pub, determined to stay alcohol free for the drive back across the A66. A quiet back road, part of the Sustrans C2C makes its undulating way to the hamlet of Scales beside the A66, a section of gravity assisted cycle path brought us, via a last brief climb, to a little used back road which led directly to Threlkeld. 

And that was it, holiday over, sunning ourselves on the bench outside Ludgate Towers; we only had packing to look forward to. And going back to work, marvellous.

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