Day 7 - Slaidburn to Grasmere

The day started out incredibly wet and windy with a steep climb up to the cross of greet. The tandem ran into trouble very early on, about 50 metres into the climb, when the chain got stuck between the spokes and the cassette. Joe thoroughly enjoyed being able to use his toolkit and engineering expertise to put it all right. With the tandem fixed we continued the climb and 6 miles later on we were at the top, all very wet and windswept. For the descent we quickly split into two groups; those with rim brakes and those with disc breaks, the weather was too wet and slippy for us road bikers to brave any high speeds, whereas the mountain bikers were far more confident. Joe was so confident infact he shot off down to the bottom and missed the turning we were meant to take! After some faff deciding how to regroup we eventually all ended up in Wray very wet and cold.

The rest of the morning went without any major hiccups and we ended up at Crooklands for lunch at 12.30ish. For the second day in a row we missed the van for lunch, or the van missed us, either way we ended up a few miles outside of the village on a wet and windy road. We took it in turns to huddle in the van to warm up before setting of for the final 25 miles of the day. At this point unfortunately Jesse realised his knee really needed to have a break, so he finished the day in the van whilst molly rode Erica's bike onto Grasmere and the tandem took a well earned break!

We had what was meant to be a relatively quick stop in Staveley to get my bike fixed, however the service wasn't quite as sharp as promised and we were hanging around for about an hour. We set off with my wallet feeling an awful lot lighter, and all of us feeling pretty dry and warm, however it wasn't to stay that way!

We were welcomed to the lakes with its classic weather but made relatively good progress through the villages. There were numerous showers and a lot of laughing at molly on her new bike. We got to the hostel at about 4 to find George and Jesse had very kindly brought all our kit in for us!

The evening in the hostel has been punctuated by a fire alarm, set off by a sneaky cigarette, the accused was insistent it was in fact her perfume that had set the alarm off...... So we all trudged outside to get rained on, again. We're dry for now, but none of us expect that to last very long! 

So our planned half day did infact take a full day, but I think we're all feeling relatively relaxed and pleased to have reached the halfway mark!