Chester to Slaidburn

I'm in Slaidburn. a lovely little Lancashire village on the south-west corner of the Yorkshire Dales (I think I've got that right). The water here comes out of the tap tea-coloured before you even put the tea bag into the cup.

It was about 85 miles to get here I think though, oddly seemed a bit shorter than that, and was pretty easy going apart from the last 10 miles or so which included some killer hills, both up and down, to get onto the moor. I have to say that whoever put this route together for the Cycle Touring Club (the route I'm following) must have really liked hills cos he or she keeps using them!

Anyway... I set off from Chester at about 7,30 and arrived here by 5.30 - not bad going actually. The guest house that I stayed at in Chester left me my breakfast on a tray outside my room so i could get an early start.

There's another long day tomorrow -~80 miles I think.

One of the things that kept me going today was the prospect of meeting with an ex-colleague from when I worked at UKOLN, Monica and her daughter (both shown here) and her husband David (who also used to work at the University of Bath where we were based). It was great to see them and they insisted on buying me a meal - they'd probably been reading my tweets about not eating enough! Anyway, it was a lovely evening. I asked one of the girls working in the pub to take this photo - she was a bit surprised when I wanted her to stand in the pouring rain while we stood on the pub doorway but she was kind enough to do it anyway - I don't think she got too wet.