We left late again this morning and headed to a local cafe for a full english, our first and only such luxury on our trip, and it was very good, I love toast and the ladies provided the best toast I’d had in a long time.

Refreshed I was greated by another puncture, after a speedy repair we made speed south towards Annan and Gretna, the route was predominantly through farmland with large open spaces and gentle undulations. Once in Gretna we stopped for a shopping spree and brew. Whilst David and mark went wild in the aisles I concentrated on the bikes and inner tube repairs, they were looking slightly tatty and in need of care. Repairs and shopping completed we hit the local cafe for a latte and A74 vote.

I left Scotland with sadness, I loved the sights, the quality of the roads and the people, so friendly, so helpful and so so so nice, no place worth visiting more in Britain than Scotland.

We had agreed to take the shortcut only to find we weren’t allowed to after all. So we followed the cyclist diversion and made haste towards Longtown and the A6, our first trip north but safer is smarter. This route although up and down was quite easy and we made swift progress to Carlisle, where we were greeted with a confidence shifter in a message board indicating 19 deaths and 12 casualties on the A6 in the last year, so if we were going to get mashed today the odds on our survival weren’t in our favour today. We ploughed on, through towns named Ae and Notthank among others, no where else to go after all, and reached Penrith in good time and without breaks in rhythm.

I arrived in Penrith and averted disaster at a bridge crossing the River Eden by using a pedestrian pathway, Mark was quite impressed with my shortcut, but the truth behind the matter was that I couldn’t stop in time because I’d been hacking it down the preceding hill, and to miss David and oncoming traffic I went left, it could have been an extremely wet ending but luckily for me the path gave me sufficient braking distance.

David found a holiday village just outside Penrith, and when we arrived we were greeted by the owner who offered us a complimentary stay. What a place, it had everything you could wish for, perfect landscape, stone free pitching, a completely dry day, red squirrels galore, showers to die for, excellent beer, great food, and wild hare’s living amongst the numerous homes, we’d arrived in heaven, and what a place to recharge our batteries.

Distance cycled 69 miles.

Time 7 hours.

Heart rate average 112 beats per minute.

Calorie expenditure 3,386.

Fat percentage of energy during exercise 55%.