Bike Route: Haverthwaite to Eskdale 23mi 2800ft of climb
Accommodation: Bower House Inn (Booking.com). Standard double room with ensuite, full English breakfast included. Dinner available onsite.
Dinner: Bower House Inn. Very good food. Ken had a beef curry pie, I had a Moroccan lamb pie, both served with seasonal vegetables and potatoes.
Our hotel stay included breakfast. I tried a sausage bap, which turned out to be English breakfast sausage links sliced and stuffed inside a buttered, floured bun. Kind of like a bacon buttie (recall our first midmorning stop in England). I did supplement that with yogurt, fruit, and granola, orange juice, and coffee.
After that healthy start, we headed out for a shortish day with a little less climbing. Again, we were on small country roads, the scenery was spectacular, the sun was shining. Fantastic biking. The hills got steep in spots, but we were riding most of them. There were fields of sheep everywhere, the spring flowers and trees were in bloom. How lucky we were.
Until we hit the waterworks. Another back story: A few months after Ken and I were married, back in 1976, we took a three-week road trip to Mexico with a friend of his from Zacatecas. While in Zacatecas, we spent an afternoon exploring an old mine. When we tried to leave, we found the 12-foot-high gates were closed and locked. We had to climb up over them to get out. That was the first of our illegal gate episodes. We've had several since then, including a crazy one in Mallorca two years ago.
Here we were again, at a waterworks facility in England. Our bike route clearly showed us following a gravel road around the waterworks building, across a pedestrian bridge, down an unpaved road, and onto a small highway. When we got to the waterworks, we found a gate that was marked "No Public Access" and "CCTV with audio at this site." The gate was closed but not locked. We looked around for alternative routes and found none. We went through the gate.
This was not the first time we had trespassed on CCTV on this trip. We considered whether the national police were keeping an eye on us, and would at some point say, "Okay, those two have gone too far. It's time to bring them in."
But, of course, that did not stop us. We walked our bikes around the building and across the little bridge (walking seeming less aggressive than riding, and we didn't want to appear aggressive on the CCTV film). So far, so good; we were right on track according to our navigation app.
After the bridge, we dared to ride our bikes down the unpaved road to the little highway. Where we were stopped by a very firmly locked gate, well equipped with CCTV cameras and audio recording devices. Well, what to do? The highway was tantalizingly close. So we took the bags off the bikes, I climbed to the other side, Ken handed over the bikes and gear, and then Ken climbed over. Dastardly deed done. On our way again.
A little farther on, we held a pasture gate open for a lady on a bike, and she stopped, and we chatted for a really long time, and a horse rider and some bikers and a car all came through and Ken opened the gate for all of them and they were grateful, and then we biked with the lady up the biggest hill of the day, and she stopped and talked to someone else, and she caught up with us at the next gate and held it for us. Life was good.
The Bower House was a nice little hotel, full of families and kids. Luckily, they served dinner; Eskdale is very small, and it does not have any other food nearby.
After dinner, we took a short walk around the grounds and gardens of the hotel. And that was it. We were tired and ready for our rest days in the Lake District.
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| Fortunately, this gate was considerably shorter than 12 feet, and we were able to get over it. Unfortunately, it was clearly marked "No Public Access." And yes, we can read English. But we are apparently not very good at following rules. |
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| The biking lady we met on gate duty said we would see vast fields of buttercups in bloom around Eskdale. She was right! |
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| Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot) was in full bloom along the fence lines. |
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| We keep trying to capture in photos how steep the roads are. This comes pretty close. But the real star is the pheasant that had just crossed in front of me, at about the center point of the photo. |
