The dog poo was an omen...

skating through it twice just cursed me completely. However, looking on the bright side, judging by the speeds I attained on wednesday it certainly seems to act as a top notch bearing lubricant.

I was already nervous about this trip - after all I would have the pungent aroma of doggedly determined dregs of the doggy doodah stuck in my wheels' nooks & crannies for an hour & a half on the way up there.

Plus the hills. The Hill Fear was upon me.

At least the sun was shining; forecast 25 degrees mmm. Although the damp from the early dew was lingering unnervingly late into the morning...which obviously meant I should head to Wilfs for a time-killing, moisture-beating cake/coffee breakfast frenzy.

Hmmm decisions, decisions - exotic fruit muffin or tiffin? You're right - it had to be both.


Thirty minutes later, fully fuelled up on caffeine & sugar I parked the car at Ings church & ventured off up the cyclepath next to the main Windermere road. Flat, smooth & easy going with the sun on my back & the wind in my hair. Well, the sun on my back anyway.

I hit the first hill five minutes later: suprisingly easy!

Ok, it wasn't much of a hill but hey, I'm from flat as a pancake Southport - this was like Everest! Particularly when I neared the summit & encountered the slippy stuff in the shade. Whoo boy, that early dew, mixed with moss, leaves & greasy rubber residue from tyre tracks was a lethal cocktail.



If you've seen me barefoot running you know how like John Cleese I can look. Well, the only way to describe how I looked negotiating this stuff is to combine the John Cleese silly walk with the ambling duck-like shuffle of Charlie Chaplin. Drunk. On skates. Sometimes backwards.







On cresting the summit I looked down on a vista of loveliness...& terror. The view ahead of the Lakes from this point is gorgeous: but there is one big monkey of a downhill to get there. Also, the first fifty metres or so were in the shade. Hmmm.

T stopping works really well on the flat. On hills, less well. On slippy, mossy steep mothers of mountains not at all.



Of course, I didn't realise this for the first five seconds of the descent. Then, I got scared; but possibly not as scared as the two Japanese girls walking a couple of dogs at the bottom of the hill were as I plummeted towards them at mach 1. I gestured wildly for them to move to their left post haste. So naturally they froze. Somehow I managed to squeeze between them, yelled "sorry"& left the scene rapidly; not looking back, so they wouldn't get a good look at my face & so be unable to give the police a good description.

Windermere & escape arrived not a moment too soon.

I hurriedly darted off down a side road. I shouldn't have done because it was, yep you guessed - steep, shady & slippy & I careered into a dry stone wall.

Pinballing my way down the lane found me a couple of minutes later in quiet, residential back streets. Nice, flat sunlit streets. I'd never seen a council estate as an oasis before.

Bemused postmen & little old ladies looked askance at me as I skated bruised, battered & bloody quick away from vengeful Yakuza squads & karate kicks.

Hitting the first country lane was a relief. Safe at last.



Until at the top of the hill & around the corner came the next roller coaster section of road. Unlike a real roller coaster, the fun bits for me were the uphills. Slow, methodical & safe. This downhill section was a Disneyland scale nightmare: gentle sunny beginning to lull me into a false sense of security & then the epic 20% gradient descent in the greasy shade began. Having earlier ascertained that T stopping doesn't work on wet hills I nevertheless wobbled around one footedly trying to slow myself down from about thirty mph as around the corner came a vision from hell. Yep, a BMW. Fortunately, not driven by the Yakuza, but still on my side of the road. Well, strictly speaking on the same side of the road as myself. Ahem. Anyway to much to his amusement I threw myself sideways to perform a classic hip/elbow/shoulder loss of skin & blood stop. This worked a treat, in that I came to a stop without hitting the accursed BMW, and that I lost much skin. And any pride I had left.

The driver of the demon car graciously stopped to make sure I was alive before laughing cruelly & driving off.

I took what was left of my hip skin & skated off into the relative calm of some rather nice single track country lane.



The whole route so far had had really good quality surfaces. Ranging between 7 to 9/10 on the dodgy tarmac quality scale. The single track kept up the quality but had a fair bit of loose gravel mixed in with it too. Plus the usual mossy greasy bits. Plus a few puddles. Oh, and some sheep poo for good measure. All good fun.






The last three miles of the single track was a lovely meander through hill & vale, tranquil and bucolic with scattered woods and ancient farms dotted about. Luckily the rabid farm dogs that thought I was a dream target of a sheep on wheels were on t'other side of the fence.




The biggest hill was saved til last. This one had everything. Loose
gravel, sheep poo,
puddles of something that I hoped was water but probably wasn't; and an old farmer leaning on his walking stick watching me.

I had to look cool. I had to skate down this malevolent mountain without breaking a sweat. I had no bloody chance.

I shot off like a bat out of hell confident that now most of the dampness in the shade had dried off I'd be able to slow myself down. The loose gravel was having none of it. Stones flew left and right as I dragged my by now well worn wheels vainly behind me. Clouds of dust & grit followed in my one footed wake. This seemed to go on forever. I rounded a bend at about thirty mph, sheer will power keeping me vertical...and the magical mantra "don't fall with the farmer watching don't fall with the farmer watching".

Somehow I made it alive to the end of the lane and grabbed onto a gate to halt my progress. The farmer was by now out of sight so I prised my hands from the gate and wiped the flies from my sweating forehead and pootled as nonchalantly as I could back to the waiting car.

Just one more thing to do before I could rest my weary bones. Eat cake.

Yep, a quick mile & a half skate down the cyclepath saw me safely esconced at Wilfs in Staveley once again.

Tshirt, skates & socks off and lying on the bench next to me drying in the sun. Job done.

Would I do it all over again? Do you think I'm mad!? Yeah, you're right I am & I would, like a shot - it was fantastic.