Monday 15 September: day nine – Slaidburn to Keswick

71.2 miles.6:52 hours of cycling. Average speed 10.2mph 

We had a wonderful day after a difficult start. We left Slaidburn at 8:20 after a cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, fried potatoes and tomatoes.  

It was drizzling as we started to climb and then it started to rain hard. It rained for only about half an hour but it was enough to get us properly wet. The terrain was really stark and  I climbed for about eight miles up to the Cross of Greet – a suitably bleak name for a bleak place – but when I got to the top, sitting on the post of the cattle grid gate, was a beautiful grouse which made that funny chortling noise that grouse make. It sat there for a few minutes, I stood and watched it, then it flew away. A lovely moment. 

When I tweeted about this, including moaning about cycling up through the rain and getting really wet, my friend Nigel wittily Tweeted back: "Grouse meets grouse".  

Pete joined me at the Cross of Greet and we dropped into Bentham for coffee in the Culture Cafe. There were four women chatting over coffee and cake and one of them asked us where we were going. When we explained three of the four (Anne, Mary and Heather) gave us £20 between them for our charities. Aren’t people fantastic! 

We cycled across towards the M6 and picked up the A6070, which was fairly flat and not too busy and took us to Kendal. We then had a bit of a climb to get to Windermere through some heavy traffic occasionally broken by cycle paths.
 

We road along the edge of the lake, past the Wordsworth visitor centre, to Ambleside before starting a long, gradual five mile climb to probably the best cycling yet – the edge of Thirlmere. Simply beautiful with Helvelyn towering over us. 

A few short and sharp climbs followed before we dropped into Keswick to a fantastic YHA with the beds already made! Such small things make a real difference after 70 odd miles. 

Both of us were feeling good and started to allow ourselves to think that we might actually make it. all the way to John o'Groats. 

We were reunited with our bags at Keswick - Frank and Linda (the cyclist and his support driver) were going in a different direction the next day but we would meet up with them later in the trip.