{"id":801,"date":"2025-05-08T07:36:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T07:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/?p=801"},"modified":"2025-05-18T21:14:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T21:14:03","slug":"day-04-st-bees-to-carlisle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/?p=801","title":{"rendered":"Day 04 – St Bees to Carlisle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I was rudely awoken by the climb ot of St Bees. Staying in coastal village is a great idea. At the end of a long day\u2019s cycling, there\u2019s a nice roll downhill. I certainly wasn\u2019t complaining last night. This morning, I\u2019m paying the price. It\u2019s warm and the wind is with me. Sweat is already dripping off my nose. I\u2019ll travel 70 miles today and half the climbing is in the first two miles. I\u2019m kept amused by thinking back to a guy I\u2019d met briefly at one of the vllage\u2019s information boards this morning. \u201cI\u2019d expected this place to be a proper shit\u2019ole,\u201d he announced. He followed quickly with, \u201cbut it isn\u2019t, mate. It isn\u2019t\u201d The village council should immediately adopt this declaration as its tourism campaign slogan and appoint this man as chair of Visit St Bees.<\/p>\n

Whitehaven glistened i the morning sunshine. It was quiet on the seafront. A few people queuing around the C2C sign with their bikes. I waited and took a photo.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Route 72 followed the coast to Lowes, then climbed to another old railway line that took me to Workington.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I hit 300 miles for the trip as I arrived at Newlands cycles. I had phoned ahead and Mark was expecting me. An hour later I was enjoying a riding experience that didn’t include a squeaking and sticking front brake.<\/p>\n

Riding out of Workington, I was looking at the way sign and looking at the map trying to work out which way to go when a guy in a Sustrans jacket came over and reorganised the pointers. Suddenly they made sense. Andy has looked after these cycleways for Sustrans for 20 years. He told me he looks after as far as Newton Stewart, so I\u2019ll be seeing his work for at least two more days.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was warm riding up to Maryport. I had lunch at the aquarium cafe and headed northward again.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The wind was with me for the first time this trip and I was enjoying it. Route 72 switched between dedicated tarac strips through the dunes, and on-road sections. A couple of times it headed inland. The first time, I fllowed it. Then I just stuck to the coast road. I had a lovely chat with another tourer who is celebrating retirement on the road with only a rough plan and absolutly no timescale. The sense of freedom that must bring!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The road kept rolling under my tyres and I found myself i nthe cobbled streets of Silloth. The village shone in the afternoon sunshine. I could see right across the Solway to tomorrow\u2019s ride.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The riding got tougher as I headed west into the wind to round Bowness Common in the far north west of Cumbria. With the wind at my back I pushed on along the cast to Carlisle, stopping only for a rural traffic jam and quick coffee as a chance t to recharge my phones.<\/p>\n

Day total: 75 miles,\u00a0 1,848ft climbed<\/p>\n

Tour total: 261 miles,\u00a0 9,129ft climbed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was rudely awoken by the climb ot of St Bees. Staying in coastal village is a great idea. At the end of a long day\u2019s cycling, there\u2019s a nice roll downhill. I certainly wasn\u2019t complaining last night. This morning, I\u2019m paying the price. It\u2019s warm and the wind is with me. Sweat is already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irishsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatblokeonabike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}