We set off West through the magnificent Yorkshire Dales passing by the mosaic of stone walls, shaggy sheep and home of the Land Rover Defender…. It was wet and cold and unfortunately most of my photos are covered in water drops and smears to the lens. It was a mission and a half at times, going up and down the narrow roads like a rollercoaster, and we had a few additional difficulties, such as my heated vest constantly becoming unplugged from the bike and somehow loosing my lens hood from my SLR. The scariest part was when we pulled over to admire the view and take some photos but we were in a puddle and when we tried to take off we hit a stone and shot suddenly sideways…I thought the bike was going down for the first time….but luckily Vince was able to use the “momentum is your friend” rule and ignored the fact that the back wheel was sliding out from under us and just soldiered on pointing the front where we wanted to go….I’m so lucky he is such a good rider! We arrived late in Cockermouth to discover that the GPS was taking us down a closed off road. We turned around and went back into the village and had a meal at the Kingfisher as we were wet, cold and starving! The soup, roast with Yorkshire pudding and sticky toffee pudding was FANTASTIC! Liz who ran the place took pity on us and really looked after us. We ended up at the Broughton Craggs hotel at Broughton just a few km out of Cockermouth itself, around 8.00pm where we had to trudge all of our great up two flights of stairs…..absolutely exhausted!
