Travel Tips

My friend and colleague Kate and I cycled the Sustrans Route 72 (Hadrian's Cycleway) over 3 and a half days in July 2007. Details, pictures and links to guest houses will appear under my tips section in due course. Meanwhile, enjoy my account of the 174 mile escapade....

Ravenglass (The Roman Bath House to be precise) is the official starting point for Sustrans Route 72 (Hadrian's Cycleway) but it's not the easiest place to get to! We had to transport our bikes on four different trains to make the journey from Nottingham to Ravenglass. The final train in Carlisle was packed with bikes, as it was the service that also stops at Whitehaven (start of the C2C route) but the train guards were very helpful and accommodated us all.

The train travels down the west coast, so you can see parts of the cycle route on the journey, which is helpful.

Ravenglass doesn't have many B+Bs, so it's advisable to book as far ahead as possible. We stayed at the Rose Garth Guest House (excellent) but there is also a campsite for tents and caravans on the road that leads from the station. There is a pub next door to Rose Garth that offers reasonable meals and ale.

The official start of route 72 is the Roman Bath House in Ravenglass, which isn't particularly easy to find (it's up a track near the railway station) and we then discovered that the first part of the route that crosses the estuary was closed for repairs.

Taking a short detour via the road, we soon met up with route 72 again without adding any more mileage. This first section is mainly flat, following the coast and the railway line through small villages such as Seascale, past Sellafield Power Station (which is HUGE) and then a lovely 2 mile gentle downhill rolling into Whitehaven, where the route is shared by cyclists going the opposite direction on the C2C route.

Then it's onwards and Northwards along plenty more quiet roads and off road dedicated cycle track. Some of it is quite isolated and I was gald I wasn't travelling alone. The other disappoinment was the building of a huge road between Whitehaven and Workington, and to see such lovely countryside being churned up by diggers for mile upon mile.

We lost route 72 somewhere north of Workington and the Sustrans map said that the route was still "under negotiation". The main road was pretty dicey, being used by lorries in a 60mph zone, but there was a narrow pavement that we used instead. We worked our way into Maryport to pick up the route on the map again, but oddly there were still no signs. We'd gone about 10 miles without seeing a route 72 sign, so we concluded that there must be a stuffy town council in Maryport who didn't like cyclists. We didn't stop for a pot of tea in protest.

The route then follows the coast road where it officially becomes a "coast of outstanding natural beauty", before turning off to take back lanes to get to Silloth. If you travel these back lanes between 3.30pm and 5pm beware - it's cow milking time! We were held up behind two seperate herds waddling down the track full of fresh cow pats on their way to the milking shed. Luckily, it then started to rain so we were able to clean our tyres off before wheeling the bikes into our guest house in Silloth.

There wasn't a great deal of choice of B+Bs in Silloth - we stayed at the West View Guest House. It didn't look much from the website, but the room was actually very large and comfortable, and breakfast is brought to you on a tray to eat at the table in your bedroom bay window, which was nice. There was a fish bar and cafe opposite, which we patronised for supper - enormous portion of fish and chips, with a lovely pog of tea. Take that, Maryport!

It was Friday 13th, but all started well. A nice day, a flat bit of "outstanding beauty" from the coastline and we saw herons, various birds, Scotland across the water and the only road with a gate across it! After about 11 miles, we had the choice to shortcut (2 miles) or take the "proper" way (11 miles) so we decided we'd be cheating if we didn't do the full version.

We stopped at the official point that Hadrian's Wall starts (or finishes, depending how you look at it), which is marked with a gazebo thing on a path. We cycled eastwards then, roughly following the course of the wall on what was obviously a long Roman road. We passed numerous walkers, mainly heading the opposite way, and a statue to commemorate the 700th anniversary of somebody's battle with somebody (one somebody died at that spot and was in the Church graveyard) - the anniversary and statue had been opened on 07/07/07 - just days before our arrival .

The rain started just outside Carlisle, where the path deteriorated and we squelched though mud and overgrown stinging nettles, Kate getting stung by some creature on her face. After our cooked breakfast (oh, and the flapjack in Port Carlisle), we didn't feel like lunch in Carlisle as planned, but headed on, only to get a puncture on the outskirts. Kate niftily changed the inner tube, by which time we were pretty wet and still only half way to Haltwhistle.

We ploughed on, hoping for a nice village pub to stop at, but being after 2pm, the only ones we passed were shut. Somewhere just east of Warwick Bridge, we found a post office / general store where the two ladies inside were very sweet and sympathetic to us dripping all over their goods. We stocked up on chocolate and crisps, encouraged by their dismissive attitude towards the forthcoming hills ("ooooh, it's just a wee bit of a pull out the village...and a wee hill towards Haltwhistle...")

Soaked to our pants, we squelched on, the rain ever harder, and huffed and puffed up hills and chased the rivers downhills. At The Banks, we went wrong (Sustrans had kindly marked two possible ways to get up the massive hill, but we mistook the signs and went up, and then down it, meaning that we had to turn around and go back up it again!). It was starting to be not very funny, and we knew we still had 12 hilly miles to go.

Time was marching on, we were hungry and soggy and then there was the incredibly huge hill heading towards Haltwhistle. We got off and pushed our bikes, our fingers and toes numb, thoughts of food driving us on. Fortunately once over that big hill, Haltwhistle appeared in the distance and it was all downhill into the village. I reached a top speed of 31.7mph in my excitement to get there!

We had booked in the "Centre of Britain Hotel" and fought for the hot shower. The bathroom had a heated floor and heated towel rail, so it was a careful case of rotating all out wet things to get them dry by morning. There was a handy launderette next door too, so the wetter things had a good old tumbledry - the best 50p I'd spent since leaving home!

Although it was still raining when we woke, we had a leisurely breakfast and it was almost dry by the time we set off for our 40 mile ride to the Western outskirts of Newcastle.

The first 12 miles were hilly, but we had a strong wind behind us and the surrounding countryside was breathtaking. There were some short steep climbs (which we walked up) and some longer gentler inclines, followed by long, gentle descents - all in all a beautiful ride and our favourite day!

We stopped in Corbridge for lunch - yes, the pub was open and still serving! The countryside then takes in parts of the Tyne valley using riverside paths, back lanes and small village routes. The sun was out by early afternoon and before long, we found ourselves pedalling through the Country Park on the approach to Newburn. We passed the cottage where George Stephenson was born (him of the Rocket fame, railways, miners lamps and numerous wives) so we stopped and enjoyed a cup of tea in his garden. (It's a cafe open to the public - we didn't trespass with our flask or anything!)

At the other end of the Country Park is the Keelman's Lodge (pub and "motel") which was heaving with people basking in the sunshine and sipping Saturday afternoon pints after a stroll around the country park. We checked into our motel room, showered then headed off to have dinner and catch a film at the metro centre (It only looked an inch on the map but took us a good 90 minutes to walk there! We could have cycled but wanted to give our poor bums a night off!)

Only 17 miles - we can do that in 2 hours we thought. A pleasant day again (whilst everyone south of York was getting a deluge of rain, we wiped on the factor 20). The route starts out along the river path and gradually the countryside gives way to industrialised sights both sides of the River Tyne. The well marked route is becoming more popular with cyclists in both directions as the CTC route merges in and families take to the sunshine on their bikes.

We stopped for breakfast at a pub on the quayside in Newcastle. After this point, it was quite a slow ride, as there was a market on and the route mingles with sidestalls, vendors and customers, plus those taking a Sunday promenade along the quayside.

The route then heads out of Newcastle towards North Shields, using disused railway path and lots of link paths between estates. There seemed to be an abnormally high rate of dead hedgehogs on this route. It made a change to rabbits, birds, frogs, snails and other roadkill we'd witnessed over the past 3 days. The downside of these paths is that they have been designed to keep motorbikes out, so navigating through regularly placed metal gates with wide panniers became quite a pain and slowed us down even more.

The route finally heads you down to the docks where you jump on the ferry (we also saw a pedestrian / cycle tunnel signposted as an alternative) - the ferries leave every 30 minutes in each direction, costs £1 per passenger and bikes are carried free. It's a very short crossing and then one more mile of cycling to reach the roman fort for a photo opportunity!