September 1 - 3, 2006

The English Sea to Sea Ride

Day 2

Stanhope

We caught up with Freedom guys again at a junction in Stanhope village, clearly seriously pissed off about something. It turned out that they had gone straight ahead at this junction and climbed up the hill we could see ahead of us, and had only realised when they reached the top that they should have tuned left at the junction. I’m not sure whether they’d tried to cut across to the Waskerley Way from the top of the hill they’d climbed, but ultimately they found themselves back at the bottom of the hill at the same junction they’d missed 45 minutes earlier. The C2C map shows the entire route on a single, multi-panel sheet, but in doing so it has to treat the route as a very thin ribbon. If you do get lost and deviate from the route it won’t take long before you leave the area covered by the map, so unless you know the area you need to take care.

pannier, but we really enjoyed the last 3 or 4 miles fast down the gentle slope of the Waskerley Way’s cinder track to Bee Cottage, where all but two of us stayed that night. (Mike and Colin had rooms booked in a B&B a little further on – Bee Cottage couldn’t quite accommodate all of us, although they offered Mike and Colin a meal and a free lift down to their B&B).

 

Showered and relaxed, we found the food at Bee Cottage to be excellent, but after a couple of beers and the day’s riding we’d had most of us (myself included) headed for an early bed and a good night’s sleep

The Freedom posse decided to have a drink at the pub on the junction before tackling the final climb, so we wished them luck and set off up the hill ourselves.

 

This climb was a killer. It wasn’t the longest of the trip, but for about three quarters of a mile it was the steepest, and we were tackling it on very tired legs. I’d managed to climb all the previous hills without a break before the summit, but I had to stop half way up this one to wolf half a power bar and some power gel to get me up the last section. At least the sun shone on us and we enjoyed a great view from the top back across the moors we had come over earlier, with spectacular shards of sunlight cutting through the clouds still lying above those moors. However, the wind was still strong enough to blow my bike over after I leant it against a post to take a photo!

 

Facing what looked like one last pull over the ridge ahead, we were happy to find that the C2C route veered off the road sharply to the right down a cinder track, and we soon found ourselves on the Waskerley Way. Phil kept his Jack Daniels in his

Stanhope—steepest part of route