Day 6 – Ambleside to Kirkconnel.

Day 6 – Ambleside to Kirkconnel. 109 miles.

Long, long day. 9 hours of cycling. The first of which only took us through 3 miles. The Kirkstone Pass. This was Paul’s idea. You can fill in your own expletives directed at him here. You’ve done it before, there’s no need for me to help. It was tough going. In places it was barely even walkable, let alone cycleable. Once we’d regrouped, we had to go back down the other side. This was just as steep, perilously quick. And wet. And dark. Not a great start, especially when we were nearly 90 minutes in and still needed to cover 103 more miles. A late finish was very much on the cards.

We pushed on, there was no choice really. We headed up and into Carlisle. The home of Eddie Stobart, inbreeding and football hooliganism. Paul and Brian were not impressed and got involved in an altercation with some local chavs outside Subway. You can take the boys out of Essex/Sussex but you can’t take the Essex/Sussex out of the boys…
After that it became a real slog, the next 60-70 miles were into either a galeforce headwind or crosswind. One being a strength sapping nightmare, the other being extremely dangerous. Tough, tough going. We passed through Gretna and into Scotland, stopping for the obligatory photo on the border. Going into Scotland would make you believe the end is close, but in fact we’re only just over halfway through. Shows what a big “country” this is. Big. Cold. Wet. Hilly…

Scotland does at least appear to have a higher class of roadkill. We all saw a pheasant lying prostrate on the side of the road today, so that was a positive at least.

We stopped in a fantastically named village for a midafternoon “pep me up”. Having shared a room with “Naked Unwin”, as I’ve started to mentally dub him, the name of this place was too good to pass up…



After that the day flew by for me. I’ve no idea what was in the 39p Happy Shopper fake Lucozade, but I knocked the final 20 miles off in not much over an hour, leaving Brian and Paul eating my dirt. A satisfying turnaround compared to the rest of the week. That was until I got to Kirkconnel and had no idea where I was going, so had to sit on the roadside (fitting opposite a cemetery) until they turned up.


Accommodation is very good tonight. Our host excellent. We went to the next village and dined in a garden centre which has a café attached to it. We were the only visitors and were treated excellently.

Today, we go through Kilmarnock and avoid Glasgow by heading West and hitting the ferry over some sort of river or sea, I’ve no idea, but eventually we end up at the top of Loch Lomond after another very long day of cycling. Remarkable to think how far we’ve got up the country.