Jennings River Ride

Had a good week last week for exercise, riding and running 4 days out of 7, with over 100 bike miles done.  75 of which were yesterday on the rather splendid Jennings River Ride, which was a tour of a load of Cumbrian bridges that were washed out in the floods a few years back.

I was with The Herb and Rick, plus Dave A who'd opted for the shorter, 38 mile route as he wasn't sure how his climbing legs would be.  We started out from Keswick after the usual Herb-journey, consisting of food, gaffing and poo stops, with a nice flat ride up Bassenthwaite, where we turned off at the Castle Inn Hotel (scene of a crap weekend with Kazza a couple of years back) and crossed our first rebuilt bridge.

This led to a more undulating, but not testing, section to Cockermouth where we said goodbye to Dave, as the medium route had a feedstop there.  We continued to Workington for our, rather paltry, feed by another bridge.  There was then a veritable collection of bridges as we headed down to Ennerdale Bridge then back up through Loweswater to Lorton, where we rejoined the medium riders to climb over Whinlatter Pass.

I'd done this on the C2C a year or two ago, and then simply sat on Rob's wheel all the way - however this time there was a large complement of folk on mountain bikes walking and weaving their way up.  I was chasing an irritating fat bloke who'd been overtaking us then dropping back for about ten miles, so I went a bit into the red zone up here, but whilst it's fairly long it's not massively steep and I was soon out on the main road and climbing the last bit to the Forestry Commission place at the top.

The descent was a bit hairy, but we were quickly at the next, even weedier feed stop - "A shortbread biscuit and a banana! What more could a man want?" asked the nice lady.  "Erm...a sausage roll and a cheese butty?" I suggested.

Herb on Newlands with the steep ramp straight ahead

Next it was off up Newlands, a new climb on me which Rick told us is "not steep".  My arse - there's a lot of it that's not steep but there's a brutal straight ramp at the top which I only saw one other bloke ride up apart from us.  You can just about see it in the picture above, and the relief on my face in the photo below taken at the top is palpable!

Phew! Note the walkers behind...

The descent from Newlands was magnificent, and as we turned left past Buttermere YHA (ah, memories...used to go once a month when I was 6!) I was thinking to myself it was pretty much done - 60 miles on the clock, only 15 to go and 12 of them are downhill or flat.  Rick had also assured us that Honister from this side is "easy".  Yeah, right...

The descent from Newlands into Buttermere, with Rick's yellow jersey just visible near the front of the cars

It's perhaps not Hardknott-steep or Wrynose-sustained, but the upper section is tough - steep bit followed by a non-rest section, then more steep and finally a lung-bursting finale past the quarry workings to the top.  Again I saw nobody else ride all of it apart from us, and I was weaving like mad to keep some momentum going.  Looking at the GPS track there was a full half mile where I averaged only 4mph.

The calm before the storm - the flat approach to Honister

And there it is - the steep part visible just left of centre

Finally it was over, and we saw Borrowdale spread out below us - well we would have had there not been a massive cloud heading up the hill towards us - so it was on with the jackets and a careful descent into the cloudburst, before Herb turned into his "Meat" alter-ego and put the hammer down past the Bowderstone, Shepherds and the Lodore - Rick and I worked together and just caught him before the roundabout in Keswick.

We finished with a total time of 5:40, but a moving time for me of 5:12, so an average speed of just over 14.5mph.  Satisfying and a superb set of climbs to finish, but that's the last time I ever believe my big brother when he tells me something's "not steep"!