A Much Better Day

We have been so impressed with the warmth and kindness of Lancashire people. Our B and B proprieter at Willow farm near Preston exchanged much banter with Pat about Nog Tow and gave us a donation for the GRCT. As did the retired teacher/historian who was our breakfast companion and who hails from Hampshire!

We were off to a later start than usual and Pat did 64 miles some on the Lancashire Sustrans route through narrow lanes and pretty villages and the rest through more hilly terrain in the Lake district. Being half term time, the Lake district is heaving, with much traffic and many walkers so progress was slower than expected. Pat seems quite tired tonight and is having a good soak in the bath while I am doing the blog.We were able to get a room in Becks Allan Guest House in Grasmere where the proprieter is a South African. He and his wife work ever so hard without help, running the Band B together; we have enjoyed chatting to them. The accommodation is very comfortable and our room overlooks the river.

Our picnic/meeting spot today was the car park at Levens Hall on the edge of the Lake District where Pat did a bit of carbo loading among the cars and cows and I loved seeing the Levens Hall (largest Elizabethan house in Cumbria) gardens which the Daily Telegraph in 2008 described as one of the 50 most beautiful gardens of the world ! I also had coffee and wrote my daily diary in a coffee shop in the quaint little village of Scorton which is on the Sustrans track. While there I chatted to an older man outside what was clearly a cyclists' cafe and told him my husband was doing the End to End ride. Says he "Several of the lads in there done that one." I was amused to see when some of the lads appeared , that they were as old if not older than Patrick!! Talking about age, at Manor House farm, I said to our elderly host, "Pat has done 77 today." To which she replied, "He really doesn't look it!" We have had a good chuckle about that one.

So it is on to Dumfries and Scotland with some awful hills at the start tomorrow.

Pat attributes some of his weariness tonight to not drinking enough today as he lost one of his bottles of his energy drink on the busy Preston roundabout (it fell off the holder on the bike) and it would have been suicidal to retrieve it.Maybe 550 miles of cycling has something to do with the tiredness!

No reception whatsoever in Grasmere so please forgive the lack of response to text messages and calls. Fortunately this B and B offers wi fi; hence the blog tonight