hills hills hills

Day 7 saw us travel from shap to blackburn. Altho I had anticipated sonm hills on this leg of the trip, I had completely under estimated what was to come!

We set off early on a beautiful misty morning and realised it was sunday and at that hour we were pretty much the only people up, apart from walkers doing the coast to coast route and some sheep who thought the road was a good place to hang out which os quite scary wheb you're hurtling down a hill at 25 mph. We soon got held up by more sheep, as we joined a farmer and his flock on the road which reminded us both of how the coubtryside works irrespective of other peoples agendas and made us feel a long way from the craziness of london!

After a short break we found a tiny lane which ran parallel to the main road and decided to take it. Mand had a tiny crash but otherwise it was a stunning road to be on, very up and down but so quiet and peaceful, the kind of place you want to be in on foot or on a bike. We dropped down into sedbergh and shortly after hit the half way point (by my very rough estimations). Very weird feeling and quite sad in a way that this trip will actually end at some point. We both feel like we could do this forever!

Went through a sunday arvo motobike meet at kirkby lonsdale before hitting the main road towards settle for the next 15 miles, which were very tough. The sun was beating down and it was just up down up down up down. Never enough to get a rhythm or anything and hundreds of gear changes. We finally got off the main road and stopped at a pub in wigglesworth. We only had about 25 miles to go and felt ok about it so set off to clitheroe where we passed 500 miles.

Once we got to clitheroe I thought we,d be alright, out of the national parks and into the metropolis of the north west. No one ever told me that blackburn is only accessible by a succession of violent and nasty hills. After the dales this was all we needed and the last 15miles were a killer. Turned out to be our hardest day so far and we climbed 4000ft overall. Got into blackburn and my parents were there to greet us with colde beers, a curry, and some cool tour t shirts!