When starting out with motorbikes, I’m not ashamed to admit I youtubed the hell out of them and what could go wrong (crashes, equipment failures, dropping the bike.. that kind of thing) and I had a good laugh about some of it.
It turns out that it could happen to anyone – I know that now because it happened to me.
Today we’d decided we were heading to Cumbria as a wee celebration of Graham’s involuntary act of advancing in experience, and as the weather was to be nice I was quite excited about the whole affair. It had been a while since the weather was warm and I was growing in confidence again.
I was so excited that when we stopped at Abington to refuel, I forgot to put the kickstand down and haddalayherdown.
FOR SHAME!
The good news is a 220kg bike isn’t as heavy as you think its going to be. The bad news is you get ripped for the rest of the day finding that out!
Ah well, nothing was broken, and nobody lost a bollock so on we go down the motorway, in my case taking shit from the 2 geriatrics at the front all the way.
The plan was to do the Hartside Pass today and then see where to dopamine took us.
We’re good with dopamine and have used it as a navigation tool regularly in the past – even to the point Graham’s road rage has been starting to chill out lately:
We ended up doing a little more than just the Hartside Pass though…
First things first, we went to a wee cafe in Longtown and had a rare sit down meal for the birthday boy. Great food!
Note the sprinkles – it was a party, after all, despite John looking he’d just trodden on a puppy.
From Longtown it was a quick trip to Alston to have some cones with sprinkles and begin the Hartside.
John’s music choice was a little prophetic, mind you:
Once he had removed the taste of avian arsehole from his mouth we hit the Hartside.
From the Hartside Pass, we went on to the A66, turned off past Ullswater (on this day it appeared to be the UKs premier campervan car park and slow moving testing facility – they should advertise, seriously!) and on to the Kirkstone Pass, which despite it being the lake districts highest road at 1469 feet had clear weather and sun. From there we took the struggle over to Ambleside which was simply epic.
Then from Ambleside we worked our way over to Keswick to refuel and have some cupcakes (with sprinkles).
At that point we took the Cumbrian Way back over to Carlisle (with a few unexpected detours – who needs a map anyway?).
All in, it was a blinder of a way to celebrate a half century and greet the good weather for the new season – I think the kirkstone pass and the struggle could be a regular thing in my future. Yumbles (with sprinkles).