C2C Day 3 - Rookhope to Sunderland

Bollocks. Read his.

Anyway, before Aperture so rudely crashed, taking my text with it, I was just saying that it was just as well we'd succumbed to the lure of an open fire and beer rather than push on the 20 miles to Rowlands Gill. Sure, we'd have broken the back of the thing leaving ourselves just 20 miles to the finish but we'd have found out just as we turned the corner out of Rookhope that we were looking straight as a hill as steep as any we'd seen so far and that wasn't the one labelled (and deservedly so) VERY STEEP HILL. Maybe we'd have sensibly turned back to the embrace of the fire.

But this morning, after forcing down some muesli and a cooked breakfast, we faced this hill and thanks to the (all praise to the) granny ring, we got over that and rolled down to Stanhope and after initially missing the turning (all praise to the big arrow on the GPS) we faced what the Rookhope landlord had said (as he peered over his beer belly) was the second worst hill. Actually, it was easily the worst. With a 17% gradient it was more than twice as steep as Hartside and at nearly three miles long, much longer than anything comparable. I stopped once to take off my gloves and jacket to try to cool down and the second time just to let my heart slow down. The third stop, where Smithy was already stopped was, we thought, the top until the gnarled old Troll-on-a-bike stopped to say "ye thinks ye has found the summit, thinks ye, but no! Further on into the clouds ye must go, where the land meets the sky and men meet their DOOOOOM!" and then he cycled off, laughing and rubbing his hooves together and scratching his back with his tail.

After that, it was a lovely run along the Waskerley Way to Consett and then the whole thing went, frankly, to shit. The last 20 miles pretty much ruined by circuitous paths alongside motorways, through industrial estates, dodging dog shit and broken glass, down to the river and up to the street, through chicanes and over roundabouts until, finally, you get to Sunderland where it all becomes OK again apart from the bit where the cycle path, the whole route NCN 7, ends with a fence blocking your way to the sea, stopping you from dipping your front tyre in the North Sea and allowing you to say that you've cycled the whole way from west to east.

Still, we picked our way around the new exclusive mixed-use development of housing, office space and marina, past some dour, disappointed anglers to a slipway on the shore at Roker where we could complete the task and praise Gore for his Tex-lined boots.

The night in the Marriot was well-earned. the curry in the Groove-tastic Shagorika was great and the sight of MrSmith on an amusement arcade jet ski looking like a bin man in his hi viz jacket, sublime.