Day 5: The longest day

Preston to Dumfries

Mileage: 124

Cycling time: 8hr 8min

Total Mileage: 533

Total cycling time: 35hr 31min

An epic day on the bike today – 12 hours on the road, raging hailstorms and a 1,400ft climb in the Lake District thrown in for fun. Can someone please remind us why we are doing this?

The reason for the long ride was that we wanted to get well into Scotland so that we can make the ferry to Arran tomorrow night (I know, it’s complicated), so aware of the daunting day ahead we set off from Nigel’s house in Preston at 7am and were soon joined by his pals Greg, Phil, David and Colin who had offered to pace us well into Cumbria – you were all a great help lads! Greg and Phil even joined us far as the summit of Shap fell which was absolutely fantastic!

Back in Lancashire we were soaked within 10 minutes of leaving Preston, but the thought of meeting family and friends in Kendal for a coffee stop (hello kids) was a great incentive and the cakes from Endmoor village bakery were absolutely awesome (as were mother-in-law’s sausage sandwiches!).

We certainly needed them to fuel us up Shap fell, but with the pass overcome we were soon speeding down towards Penrith (until I punctured…) ahead of our lunch stop where yet again we had several anonymous charity donations. After lunch, as we took an excellent detour along a Roman road towards Carlisle, we were soon joined by our support crew in the shape of Mrs Ellis and Doctor Kate in our spanking 16-seater minibus which is going to carry our gear throughout Scotland and also get us back to Manchester from John O’Groats.

We met up with the girls again as we crossed over into Scotland at Gretna before our final 20-mile push to Dumfries. At this point spirits were definitely running a little low as we rode head first into a ridiculous stormcloud and were willing ourselves to the finish, but the bedraggled quartet finally rode in to the Premier Inn at 7pm. At this point the girls really came into their own, having already checked us in and deposited our bags in our rooms – you’ve no idea how welcome this was after 12 hours on the road!

So tomorrow it’s an easy day (as captain Lance would say) to catch the last ferry over to Arran – can’t wait. And apparently our hotel the other end even has a pool – fantastic!!