A Long Ride

It was an early start, the 06:52 from Edinburgh to Carlisle. I was off on a bike adventure to Wooler in Northumbria. 

After a quick coffee and a bun, the first 15km out of Carlisle was horrible. I was on a busy A road but it was just too dangerous. Fortunately, there was a 'just about' ridable pavement alongside and then I took a side road, following my nose until I was back on my GPS track.

'Off the beaten track' is a fair summary of the route with only a few wee villages on the way. Newcastleton had a few café's though and I stopped at the 1st one for an 11:30am lunch, a very good egg and hash brown roll, followed by a fly cemetery.  

The 1st photo opportunity came at Saughtree Station, as did the first big climb of the day, up above Kielder Forest. Whilst a grey day, the road was quiet and the scenery very nice indeed. But as I headed into the Cheviot Hills, it only got better. The sun came out too. I stopped at Cessford Castle and had a wee wander, reading the interesting notice boards too. The scenery was wonderful in the area, and certainly a good one for further exploration with my big camera. I'm very pleased with this Blip image though. 

Town Yetholm and the village shop was my next stop, where I bought a cheese savoury roll and a slab of lemon drizzle cake. It was actually too big even for me, and I had to take some of the sugar icing filing out to prevent me from having a crash afterwards. 

It was only 27km to Wooler from there, up a few climbs, passing a spectacular native forest. I actually reached the youth hostel feeling quite fresh, despite having set off around 10 hours before. The pace and regular photo stops definitely helped. Getting somewhere to eat was harder though and I ended up eating a Chinese takeaway on a park bench as that was really my only option.