Hadrian’s Wall Way - Day 1 Ravenglass to Silloth

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 joining in over the long weekend. You’ll all be delighted my arch nemesis Declan (Frankie’s brother) from Ireland E2E, JOGLE, Etape du Tour etc, will join us at the end of today to take on the Silloth to Tynemouth bit, while Mark & Michael from Etape du tour and bits of JOGLE will join on Sunday. I mean with 6 people cocking about on Sunday I’m sure it will all go swimmingly…To top it all off, we’re trying to raise a little bit of cash for a charity close to all our hearts, BEAT. Frankie’s  Sponsorship page is https://www.justgiving.com/page/frankie-obrien-beat  anything you can spare is greatly received! 

All I had left to do then was get to the start at Ravenglass, but due to work at Huddersfield station and the fact that I can’t get back on Sunday due to bus replacement bus services which you can’t take a bike on, I needed to get up early, drive to Lanchester to catch the 10.14 train to Ravenglass. All packed and ready the night before, an uneventful trip over the Pennines and I was there in good time to get on the tiny 2 carriage  train where I would be meeting Frankie and Andy who were coming on the train from Manchester. Or would I? Frankie rung to say that there train was delayed and the 14 minutes they had spare to get from platform 3 to platform 5 was down to 2 minutes! It couldn’t go wrong before we’d even set off could it? Luckily, I saw 2 figures running their bikes alongside the train with a minute to spare! Once they had settled down Frankie admitted he’d already managed to knock his pannier off on the way to Andy’s…over the 2 hours to Ravenglass I asked Frankie about the route joshing with him that he hadn’t put the walking route in like I had when I was doing The John Muir Way. Oh how we laughed, as if he’d do such a thing as that…😂

At one of the stops on the way to Ravenglass, a couple got one with another 2 bikes and they were fully loaded! We counted 8 panniers between them! They also had a trailer they were pulling with a massive tent! Despite Frankie saying to me they were German, they turned out to be Dutch from near Utrecht and had just done the Way of the roses and were returning by doing Hadrian’s wall way, so were also getting out at Ravenglass. After chatting about Utrecht for a bit (I love it there) we agreed to help them out with all there bags as we had to get 5 bikes off at the station. Duly disembarked, we could set off on the 49 miles we had planned to do today, it was just after 12 and the sun was shining, lovely!

You’ll recall the Dutch couple had 8 panniers all off their bike, and a trailer to attach, we on the other hand, had all our bags on, would just need to put a few things away and we’d be off. 20 minutes later and the Dutch couple were ready to go and Frankie was still pissing about with his panniers!!! Poor Andy had the look of a man who was regretting his life choices…but finally we were away, to face a very narrow foot bridge over the incoming estuary. It was narrow for Frankie with his sticky out panniers, cue the curses and swear words as he cut his elbow smashing into the fence…

But finally we were underway! I’d come on my gravel bike, every eventuality and all that, the other 2 on roadbikes with skinny tyres. I’m sure you can see where this is going…There was a bit of green laneing at first but nothing too taxing and we were onto a tarmaced single track road leading round the peninsula and round the military base situated at Drig. It was however, a dead end and the track led into the dunes. We opened the gate and got cracking…to say this was fuckwittery of the highest order is to undersell it! It quickly led to soft sand, huge ruts and stupid gradients. Sheep were sheltered around every corner as the track dropped into a massive dunes. I was really struggling but I had 45mm wide tyres! I’ll not lie, I was finding it tremendously funny! If you can check out the video above, it gives a good snap shot of the situation…I was soon out of sight and now I was even hike-a-biking. There was no end in sight my Garmin said it was like this for another 2 miles, oh and as there was no shop in Ravenglass I didn't have any water or food with me at all and it was boiling!! I remind you we were 4 miles into the day.

Stopping at the huge warning sign to say that bullets might pass over your head at any time, I thought I’d better wait for them. 20 minutes later there was still no sign. I had no phone signal so assuming they’d turned round defeated, and fearing the lack of anything to drink I managed to make it the couple of miles to Seascale. Like a shimmering oasis there arose from the haze an ice cream shop! Absolute result! Just as I was tucking into my cherry and coffee double scoop cone, Waldorf and Stadler came smashing down the hill past me! A quick call out and they’d said they’d carry on to the Co-Op and once I’d finished my ice cream and bought a Seascale fridge magnet I trundled off to find them. I got there to find them scoffing down sandwiches and the stark truth presented itself. We’d done 8.4 miles in just under 2 hours 😱 Quite what Andy was thinking was hard to imagine! At this rate we’d be getting in around midnight…I double checked with Frankie on the route. He sheepishly admitted that he’d done this part while watching a World Cup game and maybe hadn’t given it the attention it deserved, and also and I quote, “the routes a bit sketchy at the start…”

No other option but to “follow the route” we had about a mile of lovely, lovely tarmac before we swung off right and around the back of Sellafield nuclear power station. Once again the road surface started OK but soon deteriorated. I was fine, bowling along over the gravel, massive potholes and grass down the centre of the road, the others less so and again the average speed plummeted to around 5mph. Finally as I waited at the end of the gravel road where it met the A595, I picked a leech of the inside of my knee which I must have picked up in the dunes leaving a bloody mark, we gathered ourselves and plunged into the busiest road of the day, but at least it was hard standing and at last could get some speed up! 

Turning off the A595 and into Egremont, a town I know well being an old factory shop town, we had a quick photo by the Egremont mural on the way into town and at last picked up the signs for cycle route 72, Hadrian’s Wall Way! We’d done 17 miles in 3 hours, but at least Frankie’s winging it route was over and if all else failed we could follow the wayfinding signs. 

The next couple of hours passed pleasantly, at least on the route we were taking, down what must have been old railway lines, victims of Beechings cuts in the 1960. The towns we went though were not quite as pleasant. Whitehaven and Workington are exactly the places that Mr Burnham needs to concentrate his efforts on, the decay, poverty and general left behindness  palpable in just about every facet, from the state of the housing, the parks, the shops, everything. There is much to do to rescue these places from Reforms clutches, and I wish him well, but ultimately feel he is doomed to fail.

Coming out of Whitehaven, at last what Andy was promised in the brochure started to appear! Hugging the coast next to the railway line that is still active, we had lovely views to our left of the Solway Firth as the promenade led down and into Parton, sadly with no sign of Dolly, and we had the one and only climb of the day on the way to Distington, and like a rat up a drainpipe, Andy was up and gone! A nice new piece of infrastructure had just been completed adding some switchbacks to make the gradient easier and with lovely views of  where we just came from, we were into Workington and the second mirage of the day hoved into view in the form of a Greggs!

Agreeing we needed to fill the bottles and obviously I couldn’t resist a cheeky corned beef pasty, we stayed long enough for me to spill most of my Lucazade all over my hands and pavement and took stock. We’d cracked the back of it, we’d 20 miles left and it was just after 5. It looked like Frankie “Magellan” O’Briens map had calmed down so we should be at the air B&B around 7, only 30 minutes later than planned. We did have to forego the places Frankie had painstakingly researched for lunch however as they were all closed hours ago…to misquote Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until Frankie plans the route…😉

On towards Maryport and another place I know very well due to my factory shop days. I guess like Whitehaven and Workington, it has its challenges, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it, and it was looking lovely in the sunshine! I enforced some faffing about as I asked if we could take a detour to see the old shop. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve been and couldn’t exactly remember where it was! Still another mile added unnecessarily and the obligatory photo to play with my ex colleagues on which shop is the bike in front of this trip and it was back down through town and onto the prom for the next few miles.

It was stunning. We could see Dumfries and Galloway though the heat haze across the Solway Firth, the sun high and bright in the sky, I was with my mates on my bike, it was lovely and warm, and crucially I wasn’t riding on a puncture tyre I’d spent 2 hours failing to fix on my own in a hail storm shaking uncontrollably with nothing to eat or drink! 

The 12 miles or so from Maryport soon passed as we zig zagged over the B road hugging the coast on the adjacent bike path, although it ran out in places and put us back on the road, it wasn’t too busy and the drivers were behaving themselves, and just after 7 we were pulling into the wide cobbled boulevard of Silloth high street looking for accommodation in the sunshine completing 55 miles from the original 49 with 2,500 feet of gentle climbing. We’d averaged 7mph including time spent stationary ( or carrying the bike!) a somewhat different speed to what Andy is used to! I think he’s enjoyed the day, proof will be if he sets off with us tomorrow, or gets the train back home! He has well and truly been inducted today however, I think it’s definitely the earliest it’s gone pear shaped on a trip!

Just time to tell you about the vintage car rally taking place in Silloth today and over the weekend, our host being an integral part of it and owning a Morris Minor Traveller and an old Met police Morris Minor panda car! I mean that is one police car I wouldn’t mind getting in, although it was giving Isle of Man flashbacks! Dec has also got here, and doing his usual “win friends and influence people” act whenever he goes north managed to offend a table of fellow cyclists next to us having dinner when he scoffed at them so loudly for doing the route we’re doing in 5 days that they heard and challenged him back, but he has brought presents to curry favour with the blog, so I’ll let him off! I’m looking forward to Andy handing him his arse on all 7 climbs we have tomorrow though…😂

After leaving the restaurant as the other cyclists were getting the biggest “these are all the things you can’t do in this trip” briefing, we just had time for a walk down the sea front to see the sun set over Galloway and the Solway Firth and get the tractor boy himself sitting on an actual tractor that’ll be in the show tomorrow! I mean we should have chained him to the back of it and ragged him round the field for the map route incompetence he’s shown today, but he has raised nearly £2k for BEAT, so I can let him off! Be good to get to 2k though! Link at the start of the blog!

66 miles tomorrow, but we got the morning as well which we didn’t have today, unless of course we just fritter and piss the time away…Haltwhistle here we come!