Coniston and Back! 22 Miles of PAIN!

"Today I have mostly been pushing my bike". I think from that stolen quote that you may surmise that it has been a very difficult day in the Lakes. Hard but good fun is another way of describing the "style" of riding today, I use the word "Style" very loosely as most of it has been pure luck and gravity.



The route started at the Lake side boating car park and straight up a very ridiculous tarmac hill for the first half that would see us then merge on to a track and onward and upward to follow the hill along, up and below the "Old man of Coniston". This track is very rocky and very difficult in very long stretches to pedal and meant that the term "Push Bike" became a reality.



For all the pain of going up ( just over 2100 ft and out of the clouds) we eventually came to the "Going down" bit which was again very rocky and very steep, I will add at this point I learnt the benefits of lowering my seat, as at one point I tried to get off the back in a hurry and failed and paid the price of " going arse over T*T".



The rest of the descent was done with the seat at a sensible height and went well.



Into Seathwaite and pass the pub and then back again as we missed our turn just before the pub, but we decided to stop at the pub to partake of tea, coffee chocolate and half an Amstell for our very own Mountain goat Phil.



Then it was back to the very rocky and very steep climbing that had us walking again, but at the top was a very fast and very flowing piece of track that was spoilt by "Ramblers" who thought it OK to spread themselves across, along and on every part of the path so meaning we had to slow down to a sensible speed so as to avoid the "Red sock brigade". Any way we took another wrong turn and went down the wrong track and out onto a very fast and steep road which ended up costing us at least another 5-6 miles of climbing back up to the correct track through the woods where we should have arrived at earlier.
Any way we found the woods and went through them and we had fun, and then onto more TARMAC, damn stuff gets everywhere, and then own towards Coniston Water, but again the turn alluded us and it decided to do that thing that summer dose best and rain, and rain very hard it did all the way along the lake and back to the car park.

When we got back to the van it was coffees, teas all round after drying and changing.
22 miles of hard won but hard played by all.

A good but damn hard ride that we may return to when we run out of other ideas.

I have put a little video on here of our favourite mountain goat doing a nice little tricky section of track for the camera, you will notice towards the end of the section 2 gentlemen Ne loonies on Uni-cycles, fantastic to watch but bloody hard work.