Guess what’s in the Lake District

As I mentioned in the last post, this bike tour is a highlights-only vacation. So after a night in Glasgow, we boarded a train in the bright station and zipped through to Penrith, skipping over the boring bits for somewhere scenic.

Our first day’s riding took us from there to Keswick, pronounced without the w for some reason. We encountered all the bucket list elements of the quintessential English bike trip: farm animal gates, fields of sheep, a bag of interesting flavored crisps, and narrow hedge lined roads.

Day 2

We stayed the night in a Victorian-era mansion with a gorgeous overlook to the valley below. It was interesting to experience the luxury lifestyle the original owners must have enjoyed, but it could have done with bigger showers! I kept banging my elbows on the glass doors.

The fancy accommodation did include a fancy breakfast, where I splurged my vacation desires and ordered the full thing. Before leaving town in the morning we made a pit stop at Boots for healing items.

Shortly after leaving town the way we had come in the previous day, we found ourselves on the car free path around Thirlmere. This was the full lake experience we expected! We cruised around the perimeter of the water, pedaling pleasantly on the flat roads.

All too soon the path ended and dumped us out on a highway. My Netherlands-accustomed nerves were not ready for that thrill, but we managed the short section and returned to shelter on a side road. We followed these side roads to Grasmere, where Prudhvi discovered his rear tire was flat. He pumped it but it wasn’t holding air and we didn’t have big enough inner tubes, so we limped the stricken bicycle to Ambleside, where we found a shop to fix it.

After a long day in the saddle, we continued along more gravel routes and across a ferry to Windermere. The original plan was to end at Kendal, but closer inspection of the national cycle route revealed that it continued on the A road (highway) the rest of the way, so we bailed out with the conveniently waiting train.