Day 16 – Gretna Green to Abbington


Day 16 – Gretna Green to Abbington 


Once again we buy good breakfast ingredients from the MandS store in the Motorway Reststop complex and prepare it in our room. Less expensive and more satisfying and healthy than a café. We leave without rush in a light drizzle.

 It is cool and we have our overtrousers on. We are slightly off route here – deliberately for once – and so need to cycle 2 miles up the service road to join route 74, direction Glasgow. Our road is a service road and it travels along more or less parallel to the motorway to Glassgow – at the moment quite close. I had some concern that it looked like we were going to be on this road for a long time and it might be quite busy. I am completely enthused that it has a wide, well marked and continuous cycle path on the side of the road. Something we never saw in England. I wonder if this will go all the way to Glassgow?



Even though this is gentle up hill we make great progress. 40 kms in 2.5 hours. Rain comes and goes.

We have a pleasant enough lunch in a bus shelter out of the rain.



Then the road steepens somewhat – we are climbing to 300 metres above sea level (from sea level).

8 miles from Abbington, where we will stay tonight – I get a puncture in the rear tyre. I take the wheel off and replace the punctured tube with a new tube. What a messy business with the dirty oiley chain and rear casset. I pump the new tube up and it also immediately goes flat. I had checked the inside of the tyre carefully for thorns or whatever may have caused the puncture and it was clean. I am bemused. I don’t understand why this has happened and am reluctant to replace it with our last tube. And it is taking quite a bit of time. Traffic is rushing past – I wouldn't mind being able to work on it in a more relaxed way at our overnight stop of Abbington – but I cant see anyone giving us a ride. And at Abbington – no bike shop – I might not be able to solve the problem.



Stress!

We ring around for a Taxi. Yes – but from another town called Moffat which we passed in the morning and 60 kms back. It is going to cost us. £40! Cant see an alternative. Taxi on its way. Then I realise there is a bike shop in Moffat. Ring Taxi to say they can take us there rather than Abbington. Taxi arrives. Just a hatchback car – a real push to get 2 bikes in plus us and our gear. Back to Moffat we go.

Bike shop guy – Duncan – could not have been more friendly or helpful. Showed us that the second tube I had nicked when using tyre levers to replace tyre. Showed us how to replace tyre without levers. And a few more tricks. Sold us 2 new tubes. A bit sad it has taken me 4000 kms of touring to learn some basics about gear adjustment and tyre replacement. But the lessons are learnt.


Now to get to our accommodation 50 kms up the road. And it is already 5.00 pm. Thankfully there is a bus that goes from Moffat to Abbington at 5.30 we are told by locals– to rerun our ride of this morning although on the motor way – and the bus  takes bikes. Someone is looking after us.
This bus arrives but doesn't go that way. Our bus is actually  at 6.30. Wait and hope.
6.30 and the bus is all good.

After a quick zoom up the motorway in the bus
 – and an afternoon of stress, we and our bikes arrive at Abbington and our non-refund accommodation. Good price – large room. Bike storage.



Overall we have coped with our days drama pretty well I feel. And we are still on schedule.

We have missed 8 miles of the route – but we can live with that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 15 - Penrith to Gretna Green

Image
Day 15 –  Penrith to Gretna Green We leave around 9:00 am. The hostel stay here has been great.   It is a quiet, sunny and cool Sunday morning. Churches have cars parked in front of them. They are busy enough. We are slightly confused for a few minutes on our route so things feel normal. Then we're off -  route found. Nice gentle riding with a few ups and downs.   We climb up a bit to 230 metres. Then it is generally downhill. We come across a completely delightful house beside our quiet path. We have a chat with couple who are working in their beautiful garden. They tell us about their house and show us more garden around the back.    They voted stay(no Brexit). As did everyone we talk to if the topic comes up. We find there are defibrillators everywhere. Even small towns have several on display. Including in old phone boxes. This is reassuring on some of the more taxing climbs. Below - This was probably the only phone box we saw with a phone in it. More
Read more

Day 1 - Lands End to Redruth

Image
Day 1- Lands End to Redruth. We leave St Ives by the smaller local 10.15 train for Saint Erth - where we had come from 2 days previous.. Waiting for train from St. Ives Our train connection to Penzance and our hire bike pickups is supposed to be at 11:00 AM. But the train is delayed by 30 minutes. The official reason it is delayed we are told is   - “it was late coming out of the station”. Really!!  At 11:30 we board the train to Penzance.   Then to get to the cycle hire shop we're told it's a 20 minute walk. But it looks much longer with our heavy panniers etc. So we wait for the 12:05 bus to take us along in the right direction. Then we have another ½ mike walk. Peter Rivett, who we are hiring the bikes from, gives us a friendly welcome. However he had forgotten that we would bring our special Jones handlebars from New Zealand so we proceed to work together on getting the old hand grips off the normal bars so we can take the brake and gear levers off and re-insta
Read more

Day 4 - Holsworthy to Barnstaple

Image
Day 4 - Holsworthy to Barnstaple Not many photos today. The heavy rain keeps the phones away in plastic bags. The White Hart hotel where we stay was built in the 16th century.   It feels like it with its pokey little rooms, low ceilings and rough finish. But we have a good night's sleep. In the morning,  as is becoming our routine, we repack everything ready for the bikes.   At 9:00 am Peter Rivett from Lands End Cycles arrives with a new bike for Zita. Peter and I spend 40 minutes swapping the handlebars. He's driven 100 miles to get here. Which is fair enough considering the hire cost of the bikes and the trust we have put in them.   Once the bike is set up the gears seem good and during the day Zita is very happy with the new reliable stable gear changing.   The forecast is for rain. It has been threatening to rain since yesterday afternoon.  It starts to rain. Really rain. We have toast and tea / coffee for a simple breakfast. Then reload our bikes at the back of t
Read more