Day 13 - Shepherds Shack to Borwich

Day 13 – Shepherds Shack to Borwich

It started raining over night and it is raining heavily  now.

We kit up including overtrousers for the first time on the trip. It is wet and cold.
We are away by 9:15. It's now raining madly. This makes map reading or using the phone for route finding frustratingly difficult.

We get to Hassingden and then we find a great disused rail line trail through the forest to Rushton. We are following the route markers then suddenly they completely disappear! We spend 30 minutes trying to find another marker to no avail. Using the book guide we head out of town and end up on a canal path. Our exit from this canal results in more confusion and a further delay.  We finally head off up a steep hill and on the correct route and on to moor tops.


The wind is a gale from ahead at the moment. Our cycling speed drops to a crawl. We come to an intersection which is not marked in the guide properly. We head the wrong way for 10 minutes and return.  The weather has improved however and it has stopped raining but it is still blowing hard. The atmosphere, in spite of the frustrations, up here is really great.

We are trying to make up a day and today we finish the last part of one stage and plan to complete another.  It is flat  for the next 20 km. We then have three major climbs in a remote area. It is getting late and we miss afternoon tea at Slaidburn, a small town between the first and second climbs.  So we stop to nibble some nuts and biscuits.  



Climb one was 150 metres.  Climb 2 is 150 metres and takes us high onto the Moors and the windy weather.

We then do a big descent and climb another 170 metres. This now feels very remote. We have climbed to 410 metres. It is beautiful and wild  up here.  Apparently wild sheep, rugged streams, big screes. And the colours of everything with a growling sky above..


 I had thought that once we reached this high point it was basically down hill to our accommodation. The contours on the map are very obscure. But it is not so simple. We zoom along. There is a huge and threatening weather front in the north (over the Lake District) to worry about.  We need to be careful not to miss the right turn down into the valley - and we are running out of daylight.


We finally arrive at Borwich at 8:30 pm  in the dark. The lights we have been provided with for the hire bikes are completely useless. It is dangerous for us to ride with them. We cant see the road and certainly wont be seen, So we try to get a taxi. But they are not interested in picking up 2 people with bikes. We put our own headlamps on and ride on. We are using Mister Google Maps with an almost empty phone battery. Google gets confused and we end up walking across a paddock in the dark. We finally get to a posh looking hotel./pub. Full of pretty happy punters. They help us get transport for the last 5 km  to our motorway hotel.
Bikes allowed inside


Earlier in the evening we were trying to follow Google Maps  and cross a quiet country road to go in the reverse direction. A car sped around the corner at high speed in the pitch dark. Almost ran into Zita! This was a real fright for the  both of us and the driver.  We were shocked then and later. This taught us a lesson about care on quiet roads and also about being very careful at night.

Distance so far: 979/1910 kms


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