2 September 2022
05:40 alarm goes off. Usually sleep lightly when I know I'm up early for a ride and am awake before my alarm goes off so as not to wake Mrs W, but this time I'm woken by the alarm. Must have slept well, I think. Good. Going to need it later.
I get up, go down and get ready to leave the house to drive the 40 minutes to Dan's in Leyland for the agreed 07:15 roll off. Do the usual thing of putting full kit on only to need the loo so have to undress again. Weetabix. Not enough time for porridge.
Eventually I'm off, bike in the car. Traffic is light at 06:15 on the Grane Road out of Haslingden. I reach Leyland and after a few minutes' faff, we're off. Bang on 07:15.
Sky stays blue and clear all day and the temperature is a spot on 20C. We try and time trial through Preston to avoid the rush hour traffic. Chubbing up the A6 we reach Garstang. Dan in front, I forget to tell him we're turning right. I stop to wait for him to come back when I'm asked by a nice elderly man where we're off to today. I say Great Dun Fell. He asks my age. I tell him. He says he did GDF a few years ago when he was 73! Legend! Dan comes back and we roll off. It's the first day of school after summer here and there are a couple of school buses to race as we crank through Garstang and out again to the main A6.
A quick nature stop (and I get a work email on my Garmin, reminding me to turn off those notifications), and we turn off the A6 heading into the Trough of Bowland and then on through the Lune Valley through the likes of Quernmere and Caton.
We roll through a beautiful park and, on the other side up a steep hill, we witness an older cyclist really struggle before falling off his bike. We stop and help him up. He's fine, if a little embarrassed. His friend comes back and we all set off together, before Dan and I leave them and head off towards Kirkby Lonsdale.
We stop at the Kirkby Lonsdale Spa, fill up on water, Coke, iced buns, bananas and crisps, part of which we consume on the pavement outside the Spa. The picturesque village centre is festooned with RAF bunting for some reason. Looks great. We set off north up the valley road and up and out via Firbank, climbing a fair amount up to the outskirts of Tebay. We float down a beautifully sweeping and long descent into Tebay village, the sun on our backs and green hills everywhere.
Over the roundabout and eventually we reach the pretty village of Orton from where we climb the brutish climb up on to the moors above Orton. The descent off the moor was fast-paced, and the villages of Hoff and Burrells flew by, Dan losing me a couple of times as he's just pro-like on the descents.
We eventually reached Appleby in Westmorland. Dan popped into the Co-op, which I was happy about as it gave me a breather before the beast of Great Dun Fell. I didn't want any extra weight from a shop stop on that climb so didn't buy anything.
We set off from the Co-op and up out of Appleby along surprising stabby, undulating roads through the village of Knock to the foot of Great Dun Fell. Dan wasn't feeling great so he said he'd take a breather here to compose himself. I carried on solo.
The climb ramps up deceptively quickly. The tarmac is pristine all the way up. I'm struggling to get any rhythm as the gradient changes continuously. On the brink of stopping about a third in, a guy asks if I want a photo taken of myself. Not at this point I say. If I stop now I'm not getting going again.
The sun is warm enough to make me very warm on this climb. I'm sweating a lot. I get about two thirds up and eventually my legs beat my mind and I stop to recompose myself. This climb goes on forever it seems. Rounding a sweeping left I think I'm nearly at the top, but three more layers of bends and sections present themselves. I eventually reach the golf ball dome at the summit and slump over my bike before taking some photos.
I get a message to say Dan is struggling up which is totally unlike him, which worries me. He gets to the top. What an effort. We hide from the wind behind a steel container and regroup. He says he's not feeling strong enough to do the Yorkshire Dales section we'd planned so we sensibly opt for a Co-op stop again in Appleby before riding over to Kendal to get a train back to Leyland.
The ride back over Orton Moor and Tebay is hard work but we manage it. The long descent from Tebay to Kendal is welcome relief, as is the train ride back and the cup of tea Dan's wife has for us at the end. Cracking ride up a brute.
Underestimate that climb at your peril!
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