I've just got back from a week visiting my brother up in the Lake District and having recently acquired an obscenely light bike, it would have been wrong not to take it and enjoy it on some of them hill things they have in abundance up there. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much time for riding as I would have liked but I did get out for one nice long one. I devised a loop starting from my brother's house, which I have plotted on bikely:
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Great-Salkeld-Keswick-Ambleside-Kirkstone-Pass-Penrith-Great-SalThe elevation profile shows it to be mostly rolling, not too hilly (not hilly enough for AAA points!), but there is a fairly sizeable spike at about the 70km point. This is the road from Ambleside over the Kirkstone Pass, known as "The Struggle" - three miles of continuous climbing with stretches in excess of 25% gradient. I was looking forward to it as the highlight of my ride. I considered adding an extra loop from Keswick via the Newlands and Honister passes and/or another detour via Langdale and Skelwith Bridge, but wanted to be sure of getting back in daylight - I'll save the longer ride for summer.
On the day of the ride, I'd set the alarm for 7am, aiming to get a good early start so I wouldn't be back home too late. Upon waking, I took one look out the window at the thick layer of frost covering everything and went back to bed for another hour.
It was still bitterly cold when I set off at about 8.30, and to make matters worse, for the first leg of the ride in the direction of Keswick, I was riding into an icy headwind. I was taking the C2C cycle route parallel to the A66 and hadn't planned to go all the way to Keswick, but missed the turning to St John's and ended up going along the old railway path, which is a bit heavy going on 25C tyres. I took the road out of Keswick via Castlerigg, which at least gave me my first great view of the day - down the valley towards Thirlmere:
The next bit down the valley through St John's was really lovely, especially as I'd just about warmed up by that point - although I was still regretting opting for fingerless gloves, and having my legs covered only down as far as my knees meant I couldn't feel my ankles at all. I stopped for another photo opportunity by Thirlmere, just before going over the Dunmail Raise Pass:
After the long, fast
descent down the other side of the pass, I stopped for an early lunch in Grasmere, then pressed on to face the big climb. And just as I reached Ambleside, it started to rain... Fortunately, the rain was light and lasted only a couple of minutes.
The Struggle is quite dauntingly steep from the very start, you know:
In fact, the start is one of the worst bits of the whole climb. After the first half a mile or so of near-vertical slog, it gets slightly easier, with a few short sections where it kicks up but generally quite manageable. However, the higher I got, the colder it became - not that I felt cold, as the effort of climbing was causing me to sweat by the bucket, but even so, I could tell the temperature was dropping rapidly. To make matters worse, the top of the climb was in cloud cover, so I had no visual clue as to how far I was from the summit. Eventually, I reached a section where the road levelled out briefly, so I thought that would be a good time to stop for an energy gel and to take another picture - looking back down the road:
...before heading onwards and upwards:
This next section was brutally steep and I was really starting to feel the pain, with the temperature still falling and the cloud closing in around me... and then it started to snow! And within a minute, I was in the middle of a fully fledged blizzard. I ploughed on for another hundred metres or so before finally giving up. I just couldn't see where I was going any more. So I started to walk - and it was then that I realised I could hear cars. It turns out I was less than a hundred metres from the junction at the top of the climb. Doh! So I got back on my bike and ground out the last, and worst bit of the climb, stopping at the junction to take another picture:
You'll have to take my word for it that the picture doesn't show just how heavily it was snowing.
I took refuge in the Kirkstone Inn, debating whether or not to wait for it to ease off before pressing on, or whether to give up completely... In the end, I decided to err on the side of caution, not knowing what conditions ahead were like, so called for my brother in law to come and give me a lift home in his van. Possibly the wrong decision, as it turns out - back down at lower altitude, conditions were not nearly so bad, although it was raining quite heavily by the time we got home and I probably would have felt very miserable by the time I got back.
So, not a wholly successful day out but a very enjoyable ride none the less and definitely one to revisit at a time of year when conditions are more favourable. And at least I didn't end up on the news like those wallies doing the OMM a few days earlier.
d.
