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Hadrian’s Wall Way - Day 1 Ravenglass to Silloth

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It’s that time again! After the absolute carnage of my jaunt to North Wales earlier in the year, I’ve decided I can’t be trusted out on my own for now, so decided to invite myself along on Frankie’s long planned trip across Hadrian’s Wall Way from Ravenglass in Cumbria across the top of England finishing in Tynemouth 3 days later, a jaunt of 170 miles or so mostly on quiet roads and bike paths. We’ll get to that anon…🤣 joining us early doors is Frankie’s biking buddy from Manchester Andy “the whippet” Francis, who is in for a proper baptism of fire as his normal routine is smashing round the Manchester hills at 18mph usually with Frankie and occasionally me, left floundering in his wake! Let’s see if we can break him and bring him down to our level over the 3 days! With Frankie doing all the organising, route (just you wait for this…) train times, dates and places to stay, and the route being at least partially in the North East, other interlopers from the previous debacle’s will be j...

North Wales Coastal Path Day 2 : Conwy to Holyhead via NCR 5 & 8

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  Genuinely that is the most traumatic, shambolic, chaotic and frustrating days I’ve had on a bike in the 20 years of doing this. Worse than losing my phone and booking the wrong ferry back from Belfast, worse than putting in the walking route in the Garmin at the start of the John Muir way, way worse than the Etape or any of the unbelievably hard days of JOGLE and Dec wasn’t even here!  Stay tuned for how far you can ride a gravel bike on a completely flat tyre after pinch flatting the  2 spare inner tubes you have, how to not manage to pass a single place to eat or drink in 30 miles, how to smash your only water bottle without realising and find you’ve no water or anything to drink in the middle of nowhere, how not to bring enough clothes when there’s a block 50mph head wind all day and hailstones like marbles, how to book a room in a pub so dirty it makes the scene with the toilet from trainspotting look like the Ritz, and may, many more self imposed cock ups, AND Dec ...