Day 9 - Lancaster to Carlisle

Daniel here - I will be your guest writer for the two days of my ride.

After a night in student accommodation at the University if Lancaster I was enrolled in Chris Jagger's group with Nieves. This was billed as an OK day - only 79 miles (126 km) and a "little bit of climbing". By the end if the day we had indeed done 79 miles, but with 5,000 ft (1,600m) of climbing. My longest ride to date has been 60 miles (96 km) with climbs of maybe 500 ft (160m) so this was very hard work in places - quite a few of those "sense of humour failure" gradients Nieves has mentioned before.

While I have not trained as hard or as much as anyone on the team, and therefore expected a little more huffing and puffing, I was approaching this fresh: everyone else was doing this as their 9-1/2 th day of riding with 750 miles (1,200 km) just completed...so, while I am rather pleased with my efforts today I am even more in awe than before of Nieves and her team mates who are doing this, getting late to bed and up early the next morning, and doing it all again (wait...isn't that the definition of insanity?).

The compensation today for all this lunacy was some spectacular scenery as we headed North through the Yorkshire Dales skirting around the Lake District - the picture is of one stop in the morning. We took almost exclusively B or smaller roads and had an almost car-free day. The weather was kind in that it did not rain, but it was unseasonably cold and some winter gear was required.

It is up again tomorrow at 06.00 for Day 10 which will take us across the border finishing at Cumnock. Almost flat for the first 40 miles (65 km) and then a slow climb to 800 ft (250 m) over 30 miles before a rapid descent into Cumnock.

Thank you all for your donations to this important cause and for all of your encouragement and support of Nieves.