Thursday was the ;mountain stage'. At some point we had to cross The Pennines, and much of the route planning had been around minimising the pain of this.
Our host had been true to his word and sent our clothes for drying. No one had however mentioned the need for their return! - a minor delay...
From Appleby our route took us through Kirkby Stephen, over the hills to Hawes and down the dales to Ripon - 63 miles of beautiful countryside and murderous hills!
As it turned out this was the best day of the ride. The weather was kind to us, the sun came out, and the fitness we had acquired over the previous days found us ticking off the inclines with relative ease.
We even had time to stop and admire the views.
A pleasant lunch in Hawes - which was bustling with civilisation we had not experienced for a couple of days.
After a high-level ride along the valleys we had a fast run down into Ripon which found us at our guesthouse much earlier than we expected, and in considerably better shape.
An early evening meal and 7 of the 9 took a taxi to Leeds to join in the 10th Birthday party.
Returning at 3am they had precious little time to sleep before the relatively easy ride down to Leeds the next morning.
y
The
morning start in Appleby
Lunch in Hawes
Marion finds a bush..