Hadrians Cycleway (Keswick to Ravenglass)

I woke up with a sore throat. Not the usual cold or man flu type of sore throat, this felt as if I’d swallowed a sheet of sandpaper, a course grained sheet, at that. With a sinking realisation I knew I must have excelled on the snoring front. Not the happiest realisation, believe me.

 “Oh well, better get on with it, can’t hide in here all day.” I thought, crawling out of the tent, only to come face to face with a burly, red faced man walking his dog.

“Good morning” I said, recognising him as one of the people camping in the vicinity.

“Sounded like a fucking pride of lions were in this corner last night.” was all he said, as he stopped and stood watching his dog relieve itself next to my bike.

“That bad was it?”

“I’ve never heard anything like it in my life, you two should have Government Health Warnings,” he said pointing to a rather dishevelled middle aged man who had just emerged from his tent and was standing with his hand on his throat, no doubt wondering how the hell he’d managed to swallow a sheet of course grained sandpaper during the night.

 “How long are you here for?” He grimly inquired, giving my tent and gear the once over.

“I’m off today,” I said. “I’m doing….” I said brightly, trying to defuse the situation with a change of subject, he was having none of it; this was clearly a very unhappy camper.

“Thank God for that, what about your mate over there?”

My ‘mate’ having wised up to this rapidly deteriorating situation had wisely decided to seek refuge in his car and keep his head down.

 “I couldn’t say, I don’t know him, perhaps you should ask him.” I suggested gently.

“How can you not know him? He asked, starting to get really worked up.

“If that wasn’t a team effort then who knows what is, it was like fucking synchronised swimming or something, you know what I mean?”He said, starting to get dangerously animated.

“You two could audition for Britain’s got Talent and would probably bloody win.” He continued.

“We’re only here for two days and didn’t get a damn wink of sleep last night, so that’s one of the days screwed, it’s just not on!” He lamented, looking as though he was about to do something he would later regret.

“I’m sorry mate,” I croaked.  

He did not reply, the heavy silence broken only by the sound of his dog dragging its arse across the tarpaulin I had covered my bike with.

“Perhaps, you should think about worming that dog,” I suggested, by way of an ice breaker.

“Oh, fuck off!” he said, dragging the poor unsuspecting pooch away.

“Charming” I thought.

So it was with a sense of great relief that I rode out of the campsite and headed for the Whinlatter Pass. But before we struggle up this pass, perhaps I should tell you a bit about the wonderful Town of Keswick….

It is surrounded by mountains and is on the banks of Derwent Water, one of the prettiest of the lakes in my opinion.  The area has been populated since Neolithic times. A stone circle at Castle Rigg is thought to be 4000 years old, about 1000 years older than the world famous Stonehenge. Very little is known about its very early history. What is known is that a  Market Charter was granted to a small cheese dairy in 1276 named Cese-wik, which translates to cheese farm, which in turn led to the name Keswick.

Sheep farming has always played a big role in the area with the Herdwick sheep, introduced by the Vikings, being the mainstay. All this wool gave rise to a woollen manufacture Industry which produced large quantities of caps, blankets and flannels which were then exported to the slave plantations in the Americas. Real prosperity only came in the 16^th Century with the discovery of minerals. The later discovery of graphite gave rise to pencil manufacturing, the last company, The Cumberland Pencil Company, finally closed its doors in 2007.

Today it is a predominately tourist town, its pedestrianised main street is dominated by the Moot Hall which is the National Park Information Centre. It boasts a cricket ground that was voted the loveliest in England, a wonderful theatre overlooking the Lake, which is built out of green slate as are many of the Lakeland buildings. It is the home of the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team, the first civilian mountain rescue team in the UK which is manned entirely by volunteers. It hosts the annual Mountain Festival as well as an extremely boisterous Beer Festival, to name but a few of its annual events. All in all, it’s a tremendous little town and another of my firm favourites.

The Whinlatter pass climbs through the Whinlatter Forest, England’s only true mountain forest. The name is a combination of Norse and Gaelic and means the gorse covered slope, what is lost in the translation is how steep it is. Apart from being a very well known mountain biking destination, it is also home to the famous nesting Ospreys, a big fish eating bird.

In 2001 after an absence of nearly 150 years, a pair returned, nested and raised a chick, the culmination of a number of years work by the RSPB and the Forestry Commission. They have returned every year since and have successfully raised at least one chick and often two chicks each year, which is absolutely fantastic, unless of course you happen to be a fish.

The climb up the pass is gruelling and by the time I reached the Visitors Centre on the summit, I was, not to put too fine a point on it, looking and feeling a bit walrus’y. I was just about to pull in when the memory of ‘the extremely bored and disinterested woman‘ came flooding back, so with a swerve and a large involuntary wobble, I set off down the other side of the pass and headed for Cleator Moor.

I had, somewhat misguidedly as it turned out, believed that once over Whinlatter, the ride to Ravenglass would be relatively easy, no doubt due to the scant attention I had paid the map, and the belief that it was always downhill to the sea, unless of course you lived in parts of Israel or California.

As I came to the first climb I thought. “Nail this and you’ve cracked it,” as I was after all, heading towards the coast. So it was, with ever deepening disappointment that I pedalled along for hours, in a private little world of weariness and woe, up and over endless imposing hills, all the time thinking: “It can’t be far now.” Eventually, with a huge sigh of relief, I arrived in Cleator Moor.

 Cleator Moor is a charmless ex-mining town in West Cumbria, which like so many in the North has been allowed to go into a slow terminal decline. It owes its existence to iron ore mining and the iron industry and in its day was no doubt the envy of the surrounding towns and villages. It would be easy to pass it off as yet another grey depressed ex-mining town, but you would be wrong….

Cleator has the distinction of taking the concept of shooting oneself in the foot to a new level; it in fact reloaded and shot itself in the other foot as well. Whether this was down to pure greed or staggering ineptitude is not clear. What is clear however is that they allowed a large part of the town to be dangerously undermined.

You could just imagine some ‘very important’ blustering, overweight, red-faced cretin brushing aside all opposition with the well known tried and tested “I know best, it will be alright, it’ll be good for growth,” argument. So, as what usually happens in these cases’,  everyone went dutifully to work.

What followed was catastrophic, with a sudden judder, a lot of bumping and grinding, the school, a whole street of houses and a large section of the railway line sank into the ground. Once the dust had settled it very quickly became apparent that perhaps it had not been such a good idea after all, it was the mining equivalent of having a fag in an explosives dump.

The recriminations and fallout must have been awesome, one could just picture the ‘very important’ blustering, overweight, red-faced cretin insisting that he had no recollection of instructing any one to do anything, in fact had no recollection of ever doing anything, ever.

In the event it all had to be demolished and life eventually returned to normal. These days Cleator Moor is known for producing outstanding fell runners, which must come as a huge relief to everyone living there.

The ride down to Ravenglass was pretty straight forward. I arrived found the campsite, pitched the tent as far away from everyone as I could, had a shower and then went on the hunt for couple of beers.