Not long after we had moved to Cumbria I heard about something called the Coast to Coast cycle route. It begins at Whitehaven on the west coast and traverses the Pennines, finishing at Roker Beach in Sunderland, 135 miles east. A fellow member at Penrith Methodist Church had been treated successfully for prostate cancer and he was arranging for a gang of people to join him on a sponsored ride to raise funds for the Cumberland Infirmary as a way of thanking them for his treatment. I duly invested in some slick tyres for my mountain bike and did the ride, over three days, stopping at home, near Penrith, the first night and in Stanhope, County Durham, on the second. While the whole trip was really enjoyable and worthwhile I have always felt that the length of the final day’s ride from Stanhope to Roker Beach was rather anticlimactic, wondering whether it might not be better to do the whole journey over two days, stopping somewhere near Alston in the middle.
The following year I heard that a group of staff from my school were planning to do the whole journey in a day. I was interested in joining them, but prior commitments got in the way – and, besides, I thought that I was probably not fit enough! It was around this time that I heard others speak, in hushed tones, about our colleague, Gary, who had done the whole trip and back in a day. Though this sounded utterly bonkers it was to become an enduring idea, a thought that stuck with me for another half dozen years and returned to me at around the time Mark Beaumont began his astonishing cycle ride “Around the World in 80 Days”. Throughout the summer of 2017 I watched, daily, Mark’s YouTube updates, with increasing emotional investment, to the point where (during a bout of insomnia on holiday in Pembrokeshire) I would ‘tune in’ for the latest updates from Australia and New Zealand in the middle of the night, watching it under the bedclothes using an earpiece, so as not to wake my wife. His premise was simple: ride 240 miles a day for two and a half months. Over the years since my first C2C I had increased in fitness and so a thought began to gnaw away at me: If Mark Beaumont can do it for 2.5 months, why can’t I do it for a day?! Part of me wanted to try there and then, but various factors caused me to stall, not least of these being the fact that my Garmin’s battery life was only around 12-15 hours and I thought it would take more like eighteen. And as they say, if it’s not on Strava it didn’t happen, right? Besides, by late August the days were already getting too short. Excuses, excuses...
During the winter I mentioned the idea to my regular riding partner, Shaun, and he immediately picked up on the challenge. The preceding year he and I had joined a number of others to do the Lakes and Dales Loop over two days – a reasonably challenging ride, but not overly so. This was later confirmed to me when I heard that Henry Rogers, a friend of a friend, had done the whole Loop in one day! I mentioned to Henry, via Strava, that I was thinking of doing Coast to Coast and back in a day and asked if I could interest him in joining me. His response was swift and decisive: “Oooooo, you can indeed.” And so, on the morning of July 25th 2018 we set out on the biggest ride that any of us had ever attempted.
I was up and eating breakfast by 4am, making sure that everything was ready for the ride. At 4.25am I saw Henry’s van pull up, so wheeled out my bike to meet him a couple of minutes later. Shaun joined us a couple of minutes late, having ridden across from Kirkoswald, but when you see what time we finished this was of little consequence!
We set out over Lazonby Fell to Calthwaite, careful not to inject too much pace too early in the ride, yet fast enough that I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking Oh my goodness, I hope that I am not the one who collapses like a house of cards after the first hundred miles!
After passing Skelton’s radio masts we had a short section to cycle on the main Penrith to Wigton road before peeling off towards Caldbeck Common, via the back road from Hesket Newmarket. At this point the sun was rising, the sky was getting bluer and our hopes of a successful day out were probably at their peak. The legs were feeling good and I had to keep reminding myself that we had to pace ourselves for the long haul. 
The journey to the coast was uneventful and relatively easy riding. Beautiful scenery and sporadic settlements eventually led us to the long, sweeping descent into Maryport, our chosen point on the Irish Sea coast. First, all-important stop: the public loos! Next, the obligatory photo at the end of the harbour (sadly there was no way to climb down and ‘dip in a wheel’ without endangering life and limb!)
Ah, yes, that long, sweeping hill… fortunately we were taking a different route back out of town so the hill didn’t seem quite so steep (although, ironically, we ended up climbing significantly higher before returning to undulating backroads on the way to Cockermouth. It was pleasing to reach Cockermouth as the day was beginning for local traders, knowing that we had already been to one side of England and were now on our way to the other. Departing this pleasant market town, I temporarily forgot which way I had planned to go and was all set to pedal past Cockermouth School when the Garmin ‘bleated’ (that’s the best way I can describe the sound!) at me: “Course Lost”. Ah, yes, that’s why the name Isel Road looked familiar as we powered past it. Fortunately, it turned out that Shaun has sold kitchens to people all over west Cumbria, so he was able to guide us back on to Isel Road without having to double back. And very nice road it turned out to be; it is a feature of several official CTC routes. It contours around the north side of Cockermouth Golf Course and crosses the River Derwent just between the Lakes Distillery and the top end of Bassenthwaite Lake. At the Castle Inn Hotel we joined the less-sleepy A591 to Keswick and took the opportunity to do a three-man Team Pursuit, thereby minimising the amount of time spent in the company of traffic, although I did manage to elicit the comment “Ease off a bit!” a couple of times when I was on the front, such was my enthusiasm.
Our first ‘proper’ stop of the day was for coffee and a piece of date slice at ‘Laura in the Lakes’. We spent a few minutes just resting and enjoying the morning sunshine. All too soon we set off along the appropriately-named Penrith Road with me feeling slightly anxious about finding the way on to the back road to Burns Farm. It turned out to be relatively simple, but one side-effect was that we must have ridden straight past the aforementioned Gary who had biked out to meet us. Fortunately, I heard my phone beep and realised what had happened soon enough - so we slowed down a little as we pedalled through Threlkeld enabling Gary to zip back from Keswick and catch up with us. It was a very pleasant ride from the White Horse, then along the back road near Wallthwaite, to join up with the old A66 near the Sportsman pub. Gary shared with me some aspects of his 2005 venture. It turned out that he had taken a significantly different route, so we didn’t feel compelled to attempt to beat his time! Gary peeled off at Motherby, leaving the three of us to do the very familiar ride from there back to Lazonby by way of Greystoke, resisting the urge to stop for another coffee at the Cycle Café!
Lazonby looked very different in the bright sunshine. Henry and I took the opportunity to use the loo and put on fresh sets of clothing while Shaun rode on ahead to Kirkoswald to do the same – and ensure that our lunch orders had been received and understood! Lunch turned out to be quite something: Sue had cooked up large plates of bacon, beans, toast and the biggest omelettes I’ve ever eaten, courtesy of Shaun's chickens. It set us up brilliantly for the remainder of the day, although its immediate impact was not so positive…
Have you ever tried ascending a steep hill in the blazing mid-day sun, having already cycled over 80 miles, while your stomach is doing its best to re-route the blood supply from your legs? Don’t. It’s not nice. Reaching Hartside Summit at about two-thirds our normal speed Henry made straight for the ice cream van and bought a can of ice-cold Coke. I followed suit and marvelled at its restorative properties. Do people really drink this stuff as a ‘soft drink’? It’s medicine! (Like a couple of energy gels and a double-espresso, all washed down with slightly more liquid.) For us it was just what the doctor ordered before the hair-raising descent to Leadgate and the subsequent climb at Garrigill. Fortunately a few fluffy clouds had moved across the sun by this point, so we couldn’t blame our slow climb on having our brains boiled, just the mashed legs.
The next few miles were something of a blur to me, except for the point in Nenthead where the even-scarier descent suddenly reaches a T-junction. Fail to stop there and it could be curtains! I think the next few miles involved some more climbing and descending but don’t really recall much (apart from the lovely scenery) until we reached St.John’s Chapel for coffee. From there it wasn’t far to Stanhope, site of the last brutal climb before the gentle descent into Sunderland.
On my previous ascent of this climb I had been on a mountain bike, with its low gearing, and had been chatting to a man riding a recumbent. On a road bike, with Shaun setting the pace up ahead, it was a very different matter! At the top we visited the old railway station at Parkhead to replenish water supplies and then gingerly began our descent of the Waskerley Way, initially unsure of the surface on which we would be riding. (After some ‘interesting’ experiences following Google Maps’ “stay on roads” option in France I was not sure whether it would be large limestone chippings or fine grit. Fortunately, it was mostly was fine grit, or even tarmac in many places.) With blue sky all around we were treated to fabulous views all the way across to the coast… except that our imagined view across to the sea didn’t materialise. Despite having done the same route eight years ago I had forgotten that the edge of the Pennines is still quite a sizeable distance from the North Sea (over 35 miles). Nevertheless, we pressed on, maintaining a cracking pace as we swept along the old railway.
On reaching the outskirts of Sunderland the C2C route then did some pretty weird ducking and weaving, to such an extent that we passed a “Sunderland 18 miles” signpost somewhere near Stanley, only to reach a “Sunderland 20 miles” signpost 5 minutes later! (No, we weren’t lost - or hallucinating! I can only assume that they measure the distance ‘as the crow flies’.) Initially this weaving was fun – popping in and out of woodland – but the closer we got to the coast the more we seemed to zig and zag. Fatigue was beginning to set in, as we turned each corner expecting to see the sea, only to be confronted with another little hike on the pavement through an industrial estate and then back down to the River Wear. We don’t know if it was started deliberately, or was just a result of strong sunlight, dry grass and a bit of broken glass, but on our penultimate stretch of riverside path we came upon a huge plume of smoke. The grass beside the path was well alight and this had set fire to the ivy growing up the wall, which, in turn, had set fire to the grass at the top, some thirty feet above us. Henry stopped and phoned the Fire Service, and as we continued along the path we passed two fire officers with rubber beaters. I do hope they sent something more substantial to the top of the wall!
At last we reached Roker Beach, to fairly muted euphoria. I went to dip my front wheel in the water, while Shaun made a bee-line for the loo. Making my way back across the sand Henry was nowhere to be seen. After waiting for a couple of minutes I decided to call him and fortunately he answered. It turned out that he had sat down at the end of the promenade, overwhelmed by the enormity of the ride so far, and was contemplating the task yet to be done. Or words to that effect! I have to come clean at this point and confess that I was wondering how on earth we were going to ride all that way back again. After all, it had seemed like forever getting from Parkhead to the coast – and that was when we were much fresher and it was all downhill! I guess that the other two were probably thinking much the same thing. I was certainly weighing up other transportation options, although I was fairly sure that my wife, for one, would not be driving out to collect us. It was my own stupid idea, after all!
At times like these food always makes things better, so finding a chippy less than a hundred yards up the prom was a very welcome discovery. We sat down in the evening sunshine and enjoyed a big pile of chips. Plans were made: follow the roads past the Stadium of Light and ignore all the C2C signs, stopping to buy a final bunch of supplies from a corner shop. This done, we managed to forge our way back through Washington and out to Beamish in a fraction of the time it had taken us to get there. At this point, however, Shaun punctured, and our tired minds turned a simple task of swapping out an inner tube and inflating it into rather a dog’s breakfast. Shaun managed to set off his CO2 cannister before it was properly attached, then Henry managed to inflate the tube using his CO2, only to find that the tyre bead had come ‘unclinched’ – a bicycle wheel’s version of a hernia. The only cure for this is to let the gas out and re-seat the tyre bead. But this left us with just one inflation option – my trusty pump. “No problem,” I said. “It will inflate to 100 p.s.i.” At least it used to. On this occasion it must have been barely 40 p.s.i., and the thought of riding on all that grit/gravel without incurring another pinch flat weighed heavily on our minds, never mind the thought of high speed descents in the Pennines with poor back wheel stability. As twilight approached we rode on for a couple more miles before I spotted someone’s garage door open, revealing a number of bikes hanging up. “Let’s ask if we can use their pump,” I suggested. The householder was very amenable, if slightly bemused by our reply to his question about where we were going, and Shaun’s tyre was once again returned to a healthy 100 p.s.i.
The climb back to Parkhead didn’t seem nearly as far as I had feared, although the sun had disappeared over the mountains some time before we reached the top of the fast descent into Stanhope. For the next few miles we battled on against gravity, taking it in turns to work on the front of the group, doing our best to conserve energy – and morale. The road climbed steadily through Eastgate, Westgate, Daddry Shield and St.John’s Chapel and by the time we reached Cowshill I had convinced myself that we were at the top of the climb above Nenthead. Henry was swift to remove that particular illusion. “We haven’t reached the main climb yet!” he helpfully pointed out. Now working in total darkness, we ground our way up towards (the perhaps appropriately-named) Kilhope, flanked by those black and white poles with reflectors on. Just as I thought the road must be levelling out my headlight beam caught the next batch of poles and they, from the point of view of my addled brain, appeared to be going vertically upwards! I let out a small moan and got out of the saddle to start zig-zagging in a desperate attempt to remain on the bike. I don’t know what the others were thinking but, given that I had come up with the whole crazy notion, I can’t imagine their thoughts were too charitable. Nevertheless, we made it. As the road tilted downhill to Nenthead we picked up speed and barely paused for thought as we barrelled along towards Alston. Less than 5 miles to the final climb now. I began to believe that we might actually be able to finish this thing…
The final drag from Alston to Hartside was, for me, not about the climbing – the gradient is not steep – nor about the distance. (What’s a mere six miles?!) Rather it was about the realisation that I could no longer sit down. For several miles now I had been resting butt-cheeks alternately on the saddle while on the flat, and had been gripping the saddle between my thighs, whilst keeping my undercarriage slightly raised, on the descents. The others seemed to be experiencing a similar issue, and as we rode along I trialled a number of techniques, my settled favourite being to put the bike in a reasonably high gear, pedal seven or nine revolutions while out of the saddle, then freewheel while standing on a stretched-out leg. This was then repeated for the other leg. Every now and again I would park my bum back on the saddle for a moment and think, Oh this doesn’t hurt so much, a couple of seconds before the raging ache began again. The pedalling technique worked, though, and we soon reached Hartside Summit, just before midnight. Despite being armed with only a weak, flashing front light Shaun descended at the head of our group (“I’ve done it so many times I could ride down that in my sleep!” he later explained) followed by me and Henry with our more powerful beams. The last time we rode down there together was a couple of years ago when Henry “Everested” Hartside from Renwick. (In essence you ride up and down the same bit of road until you have ascended the height of Mt Everest, some 8800 metres. This entailed ascending Hartside 23.3 times!) By now all of us could sense victory, but we didn’t overdo the descent, still aware that one of the many rabbits that we had seen could run into our spokes and land us in hospital. Henry and I bade farewell to Shaun in Kirkoswald before hammering the ride back to Lazonby. I had been mentally preparing myself to have to push the bikes from the Co-op up the hill to my house, but a late surge of adrenaline resulted in (what my tired brain imagined to be) a powerful kick up the final half mile. We had made it! Twenty hours, including the food stops, and over 230 miles covered. Not a bad day’s work.
Now imagine doing that distance every day for 2.5 months. I shudder at the thought…
![Around the World in 80 Days: My World Record Breaking Adventure by [Beaumont, Mark]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51V7nzSnw1L.jpg)
