Day 8 - Meeting a friend

Sedbergh - Moffet

Today was always going to be my longest day with a climb up over Shap fell in to the bargain. The reason for this long day was firstly that I am being joined on the ride by my friend and neighbor Derek who is going to do Scotland End 2 End. Secondly, making today a long day left the rest of the trip falling into equal days of 80 miles.

Knowing that Derek would be arriving at Carlisle before 12 I hoped to get there soon after this. All good plans have their undoing and today had several. Firstly I stopped in the village of Orton to get my official end 2 end sheet stamped in the post office - I'll return to this later in the ride, only to be distracted by to goods on offer in this post office / general store. Following this I met a couple of lads heading south to Lands End. They thought that they'd had head winds!!!! and then finally in Penrith, the opportunity to check tire pressures and do a bit of shopping in a local bike shop was to much of a temptation.

In the end I arrived in Carlisle at about 13:30 at which point we headed north to the Scottish boarder. Gretna provided the point of crossing. From here we followed the old A74 north west up to Moffat. This provided some of the quiertest roads of the trip so far as we were riding on what used to be the main road north to Glasgow that has now been replaced by the M74 motorway.

On arriving in Moffat we obviously needed food and fluid replacement, this was provided by several establishments however I'd like to thank the locals of the Stag Inn who donated £28.50 to the cause.
Stats for the day
Miles - 97.5 - I did think about going for the 100 however.........
Average Speed - 12
Max Speed - 34
Pubs visited - 2