Coast to Coast '10

Holiday time! Once again this year our summer holiday has been cycle touring. Just a week this year, so we planned a route across the spine of the UK that took in all the best of Cumbria, Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. We started at Windermere, made our way west to the coast at St Bees, then headed east and north taking in Bassenthwaite Lake, Hadrian's Wall, Kielder Water, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Lindisfarne Island on the East coast.

Over 6 days of cycling we covered over 300 road miles. We also took a day off to walk the wall from Housesteads fort all the way to The Twice Brewed Inn and then the museum at Vindolanda. All in all an excellent holiday!


Yours truly posing on the beach at St Bees

Rosie setting the pace on one of the quiet back roads we took to climb out of the Lake District

Rosie poses on Hadrian's wall

Arriving to find queuing traffic at Lindisfarne Causeway

Lindisfarne Mead!

I can definitely recommend cycle touring as the best way to truly experience the places you visit. During this holiday I lost count of the number of people who, when we showed up on our bikes, wanted to know where our car was. So many people are so dependant on their cars, and yet I find that travelling these sorts of distances without one is a very liberating experience.

Now, where we will be cycling next summer?

6 weeks/4 days in Cork

Well, it's now a week since I took Rosie to Birmingham Airport to see her off on her flight to Cork in Ireland, where she's doing her elective. This is the part of her medical training where she can go anywhere she likes in the world and do anything medicine related, so she chose to jet out to the Emerald Isle and deliver babies in a maternity hospital for 6 weeks. Yep... fun!

Anyway, she was really excited to be going and I think I'm getting a hint of that excitement too as I've not been to Ireland before either, and I'm looking forward to my trip out there to see her in a couple of weeks. I've recently been paid, so I've now booked my flights. Sadly for me this will involve a trip to Heathrow rather than the relative civility of Birmingham, as that was where the cheapest flight was from, but at least the flight won't be too long.

In the words of the Cranberries:

"Did ya' have to,
Did ya' have to,
Did ya' have to fly Aer Lingus..."

Well yes I did. It was either that or BMI baby from Manchester, or worse... Scum Airways, and I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with them!

Something else I will mention is that Rosie is writing her own blog of her own experiences whilst out there, so here's the web address:

http://www.6weeksincork.blogspot.com/