We got up at 7.30, and had breakfast at around 8 of friut, cerial, a fry up, toast and coissants – all quite amazing really!

Set off at 9.15 and headed for Hawick. The weather was nice and terrain not too tough so we arrived in Hawick for lunch, where we found a Greggs, bought some bread and ate bread and jam in a park.

We stayed around Hawick for a while, allowing Tom to rest his knee, and knowing that we had plenty of time before the youth hostel opened. As an experiment, tom put his pedal tops on his spd’s and tried cycling for the rest of the day in his normal shoes.

We got to Broadmeadows youth hostel at just past 4 after pushing our bikes half a mile up a forest footpath. Youth hostels always are on the top of hills!

The volunteer warden, Iain was very friendly and let us in to have showers etc. There was noone else booked into the youth hostel, although later on a woman did turn up bringing the total to 3.
For tea we had pasta + sauce, and although it didn’t taste of much there was plenty of it!

We decided to continue the pedal experiment tomorrow and so swapped our entire pedals around – so now I was using the spd’s and Tom was using the toe clips.

We were fairly tired and so headed off to bed at 9.30.

Distance: 49.9 miles [12.7 mph average] (Cumulative: 492 miles)

Tom had got the train to my house in Denton last night, and so me and Tom could continue together. The last part of the trip (Edinburgh to John O’Groats) was going to be the hardest to finish off at a later date, and so we decided to skip a bit in the middle for now, and come back to it later. Manchester to Penrith is a 2 day cycle ride which we hope to complete later in the summer.

We got up fairly early, and got the train from Manchester Picadilly to Penrith, in the North Lakes.
On the train we found a newspaper that somone had left, so we started the tricky soduku – and it was tricky. We made a few mistakes and had to backtrack. The 30 minute wait on the station at Preston helped us to have enough time to complete it.

We arrived in Penrith at 12.40, and looked at the ruins of Penrith Castle, and took some pictures before setting off.

After about 9 miles we stopped outside a farm at the side of the road and had some lunch. We then continued another 9 miles and got mixed up in the one way system at Carlisle, but it did enable us to find the last bank machine that issued English money.

Then we continued onto Gretna Green and Sprinfield and started looking for a b&b. Because Tom felt fine continuing and we didn’t spot any cheap b&b’s we carried on along the A7 and stopped off at Canonbie. After asking at a few b&b’s and a friendly local, we found a place selling hot food and a b&b for £20 each.

At the b&b they made us feel very welcome, giving us shortbread and coffee on arrival and showing us the house. After revisting the place selling hot food we ate fish and chips and headed back to the b&b. There we played ludo for a long while and watched some TV before heading off to bed fairly late.

Distance: 47.7 miles [12.8 mph average] (Cumulative: 442 miles)

From Ilam Hall we got up at 7 and set off at 9. There was a very large hill at the beginning of the day, but once we got onto the Tissington Trail we managed a decent speed.

The surface of the Tissington Trail varies a lot, from loose fine gravel to farily solid mud, and you notice that the surface affects your speed and the noise when you are cycling along the flat.

Me and Hazel had cycled along the Tissington trail a few years ago, and had managed to go the wrong way down it for a few miles before we realised. We made sure we couldn’t make that mistake again by starting at the beginning of the trail.

Once we had come to the end of the trail, we continued on route 68 round Buxton, and then stopped for a while to eat lunch. We continued downhill for about 5 miles on the A5004 which was nice – speeds of greater than 30mph for no current effort! It came to an abrupt end aproaching Whaley Bridge when the valve ripped off my front inner tube, causing me to lose steering and front brake and me to leave the bike for the road.

Unharmed and undetered, I replaced the inner tube with a spare and continued into Whaley Bridge where we picked up the canal to Marple, then onto Hyde.

For a day that we thought was going to be short but hilly, it was surprisingly flat because of the route we chose. This meant that we got back before 4, so I could have a shower and go round to my brothers house to watch to football and celebrate his 4th wedding anniversary.

Distance: 50.4 miles (Cumulative: 394 miles)