A date with slate

I've found that being on holiday has a habit of making one extremely lazy, so it was actually the back of lunchtime that we set off for, well, actually it'd taken us half the morning to decide. There are some go-to places in the Lake District and we wanted to ride some of the challenging-but-not-too-challenging passes. We figured out a loop from Keswick to take us up Whinlatter Pass and Honister Pass, as recommended by my copy of Ride magazine.

Whinlatter was twisty and fun, with BikerBabe steering a masterful course with me as pillion.  We rode south to Buttermere in search of the shingle beach, and the sun came out, warm and strong!  After topping up our tans we stayed a while longer and had a super wee lunch nearby.

From Buttermere we headed to Honister. Biscuit, the little bike that could, tractored her way up the steep road, through an ever changing landscape of fields, trees, scree and quarries. At the top is the Honister slate mine, very much still making slate, with some nice bits of history lying around to find too. The view back down the valley was amazing.

From there we rode around and back to Keswick to complete our loop. The sun was still warm and the evening young so after changing into civvies we took a long, slow wander around the town (see extra), bought ice creams, and eventually settled at the marina to watch the sun dipping down behind the clouds.

Back at base we had a very fancy late tea of beans on toast and cookies, and all was well with the world.