Day something - milnthorpe to langholm.

Here comes langholm (is what the sign says). We are now in our third and final country of our epic journey. We started out cycling some small country lanes to kendal which seemed to take ages which i think was largely due to the anticipation of shap. We decided not to stop in kendal so that we would be warmed up for the long climb ahead. Graeme gets the prize for worst motivational manager ever as we went past a shap mileage sign which said 14 miles and graeme remarked "its uphill for all of that" , "great just what i wanted to hear" i replied. So we started our ascent in a cool light drizzle. As we continued on the road i realised the pass wasnt going to be as bad as i had anticipated. Although the majority of the hill was straight up there were some little downs in between which gave recuperation time. It became ever mistier and the drizzle became downpour as we neared the top. We got absolutely totally soaked for the first time. Who would have thought that could happen in the lakes! As we descended the water on the road was so bad we could barely see to cycle and the wind chill was pretty extreme in our wet clothes. We arrived in shap sodden tryin to find somewhere to warm up but none of the pubs were open so we were starting to get a nasty sinking feeling that we would have to cycle wet and cold to penrith. Luckily the local chippy was open so we really enjoyed a warm up and cumberland sausage and chips for lunch with a big pot of tea. Bit of a slog to penrith as we were quite tired from the hill climb then had to climb a pointless hill in penrith navigating around the town centre on the one way system. More ups and downs into carlisle on the pretty straight roman road. Then cycling up the a7 in the sunshine. Graeme lost a pannier for the second time this holiday. Then in a later tiredness related incident he did a gravel dive by misjudging the edge of the road and ending up in the grassy verge after a "controlled bail". Yeah right! Lovely pine smells coming along the a7. Finally arrived in langholm having done our highest pass and mileage of the holiday so far. Also managed to get over 10mph avg speed too. A good day! Stats - 116km(although odo failed for a short while so this is probably understated by a couple of km). Cumulative 924 km. Avg speed 17.5 although could have been faster if not waiting for graeme to get back on his bike!