Great Britain Bike Tour: Part 4 (A Way Through the Pennines)

August 08, 2023

A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 3 here.

In this post, we'll ramble around the countryside of England in the vague vicinity of Northumberland and the Yorkshire Dales. This leg of the journey begins at Sycamore Gap in Hadrian's Wall and finishes in Manchester.

Our journey began with a speedy couple of miles downhill to the village of Haltwhistle, self-proclaimed "center of Britain." Haltwhistle was a wonderful first stop of the day thanks to the excellent flat white, tea, and breakfast sandwiches at Brew Bar. My only regret: it was still too early in the day to try their draft list!

We departed Haltwhistle not by road, but by rail trail. Specifically, the South Tyne Trail. There were an awful lot of livestock gates, but the grade was easy, the views were beautiful, and the trail was largely in decent shape. Sadly, you can no longer ride your bike over the very long, very high viaduct (without lugging your bike up a very rough hill, at least) because an old rail station at one end of the viaduct is now a private home, blocking the easiest graded access to the viaduct. This not only deprives bicyclists of a lovely view, but also forces riders onto a series of steeply graded, narrow roads shared with cars. But hey, at least you get a nice view of the viaduct from the giant hill you're forced to climb.

We continued down the rail trail, across old rail bridges and over many a sheep field, until we reached Alston, "England's highest market town". After a quick quiche at the local bakery and a quick pint at the local pub, we headed up a huge hill and found ourselves ascending Hartside Pass, which peaks at 1904 feet with sweeping views of the surrounding countryside and the distant Lake District. The road was long, somewhat busy, and windy, but there's something special about the feeling of climbing a massive pass.

At the top of the pass, we met some other (exhausted looking, despite a much leaner kit of supplies) bicyclists. They were taking a much shorter (but still very lovely looking) route called the Sea to Summit, and provided us with one of the first pictures of just Meg and myself from the entire trip! As usual, they were intrigued by our alt bars, our steel bikes, and the fact that I'm using a drivetrain that isn't exactly intended for touring. We had a lovely chat, snagged some pics of the views, and then headed down a long, relaxing, well-earned downhill.

But we don't optimize for smooth downhills for long -- they get boring! Soon we switched onto a windy dirt road chock full of loose gravel and puddles not quite deep enough to swallow our bicycles. The Lake District towered in the distance, the only sun-draped mountains in an otherwise mundane, cloudy sprawl of farmland. The views had us strongly considering a spot reroute into the Lake District, but we had a more important immediate goal: finding a campsite. We ended up camping at a caravan park in Dufton a convenient 3 minute walk from The Stag, one of the finest local pubs I've ever had dinner at. Our mushroom pasta and chicken risotto were speedily prepared and absolutely delicious. We had a couple of post-dinner pints at the pub, then headed back to the campsite, where we started a tradition we would follow at many campsites for the rest of the trip: closing out the night drinking a pint and chatting with a stranger who just couldn't get over how cool bicycle touring is. We had such a nice time chatting that we were (lightly) chastised by another stranger that our conversation was too loud after dark!

We woke up early in the morning, thanks to the obnoxious population of local birds. We quickly packed up and headed to breakfast in the small town of Appleby-in-Westmorland. Unfortunately, we had the worst breakfast experience of my life at the Eden River Cafe, whose Facebook page I've linked because their official site appears to be full of viruses. The service was incredibly slow. They forgot our drinks, even though that was the only thing we ordered for the first 20 minutes in the shop. The fire alarm kept going off. The food was oversalted, yet tasteless. We somehow wasted more than an hour and an absurd amount of money for a couple of eggs, sausages, and some canned beans. But at least we got food and plenty of motivation to ride on for the day towards a better lunch.

The morning was hot, humid, and stank of manure. Lots of ups and downs on tiny little country roads. A cute waterfall. Steep grades in both directions, But we eventually climbed our way out of the humid low country into a breeze. There, on the top of a plateau, surrounded by sheep and rocks, we enjoyed a much tastier second breakfast of granola bars. Then one of my rim brake pads fell off; fortunately, Meg has super vision and super hearing, so she heard it fall off and spotted it within a minute. We re-attached the pad, I thanked Meg for her incredible detective skills, and we continued on towards lunch.

Our journey towards food took us down a gorgeous valley that has thankfully not been totally ruined by the nearby A683 motorway. We passed quaint little farms, said hi to plenty of sheep, zoomed our way down (and then back up) some well-designed roads, and generally had a lovely time. This area had some of the loveliest views of our whole trip: brilliant blue skies, rolling green not-quite-mountain hills, and a sun that was a little too warm at times.

Once we reached Sedbergh, we had lunch at the Dalesman Country Inn. This place made one of the greatest hand pies Meg has ever eaten, and a great selection of pints.

We walked around the very cute town to find some post-lunch ice cream, then headed to the local co-op for snacks and supplies. A quick jaunt through the lovely boarding school grounds in the center of town wasn't enough to cool us down, so we made a quick stop at the River Rawthey to pour water over our heads.

After Sedbergh, the day got even hotter. So when we passed Sedbergh Golf Club, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a(nother) pint. The deck turned out to be a lovely place to cool down and prepare ourselves for the upcoming massive ascent.

The next hill was big. But the views were beautiful. We climbed. We thought were were almost done.

Then we climbed some more. Eventually we reached Gastack Beck Waterfall, a very cool natural waterfall into a stone swimming hole, where we briefly stopped for another cooldown.

And then we climbed some more. But eventually we reached the top, and the descent was nothing short of glorious. A long downhill later, we grabbed a surprisingly fancy, but reasonably-priced dinner at the Marton Arms, then set up camp at Meadow Falls, where we struck up conversation with a Timothy Dalton-lookalike bicycle touring enthusiast before bed. When James Bond recommends touring the Welsh Borders, you ought to do it.

We woke up to stormy skies, but I was strongly motivated by the day's breakfast option: Seasons Bakery. They made a fantastic breakfast sandwich, and their coffee was exactly as adequate as I expected from a place that makes amazing bread. Their sausage rolls kept us going for most of the day!

It wasn't long before we found ourselves in Yorkshire Dales National Park, which was beautiful but quite windy. Meg had a wonderful scone at 3 Peaks Cycles in Settle, but I was a little disappointed that the gearhead working the counter couldn't give me a dab of grease to fix up my brakes. Fortunately, I didn't need my brakes much on the massive 15% grade hill right out of town.

It was here that we noticed a change in driver behaviour: so far in our journey, cars really hadn't bothered us at all. But starting in Settle, we started to see too many cars, going too fast. But the roads weren't any bigger than before, so drivers started to feel entitled to pass us even when it wasn't 100% safe. And for some reason even the scenic spots were covered in trash. And the motorcyclists, instead of giving a friendly wave, started to heckle us and tell us to "get one of these" (I strongly considered repeating the same advice when we passed him going downhill 10 minutes later while he was stuck sweating in leathers in traffic). But, despite the rude drivers, we slowly wound our way across the hills to our destination for the day: Hepton Bridge.

I won't say much about Hepton Bridge. We went to a nice chippy. It was largely full of drunk young people. Riding our bikes into town felt a lot like the establishing shots of Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean. But we ended up finding a decent campsite at Old Chamber Camping just 500 feet of ascent on 20% graded cobblestone above town. The showers were adequate. The quiet hours were kinda sorta followed. The views were beautiful. The midges weren't too annoying. Our beer and digestives were even better. And the distance dulled the sounds of drunken revelry emanating from the valley below.

This leg of our journey wraps up with a bike ride down most of the length of the Rochdale Canal into downtown Manchester. There were a lot of cobblestones, locks, weird street crossings, odd diversions, trash, cider-drinking miscreants, geese, cramped bridges, canal boats, and confused pedestrian dog owners. We started in a cute rural valley, made our way through a series of small farming towns in rolling countryside, and eventually made it all the way into strip mall hell. And then we pushed our way through the wasteland into the centre of Manchester, which turned out to be clean, cute, and interesting.

Thanks for reading! Join us next time to learn about our journey in Wales.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 5 here.