Tuesday 26th

Chris called his great uncle Robert Leakey who lives in Giggleswick, Settle (Yorkshire) to see if we could stay with him and his wife Barbara, he said that would be fine and so we set off from Shap towards the Yorkshire Dales. I was looking forward to meeting Chris's uncle as I had heard much about him (he's 94 and likes inventing things).

To start with it was just drizzling and we headed towards Orton and followed the 68 cycle route, over the Orton fells towards Asby which was lovely, not much more than a farm track, so we had the place to ourselves and it was nice to be surrounded by hills covered in purple heather.

The cycle route didn't quite take us where we'd expected (Tebay) and after 20miles we ended up at Kirkby Stephen, more east than south. But we found a route through from there towards Hawes and down to Settle on google maps and set off. The wind was blowing and the rain joined in too, so for 10 miles we were cycling in very bad conditions, I almost stopped and gave up after 5 miles. It's meant to be summer.

After that 10 miles we still had another 20-30 to go, I didn't think I could cycle that far, not with the weather being so terrible. Chris's low gears had stopped working meaning that he had to stand up to get up the hills. We headed towards Hawes and the rain stopped and the wind calmed down, so we agreed to continue.

The next 15 miles took us through the Yorkshire dales, hill after hill, very heavy rain and wind, it was miserable to say the least. There was so much water hitting my face that my eyebrows couldn't cope, I needed windscreen wipers! Water was in my eyes and we were getting soaked. After 5 miles I decided i couldn't do this, it was too hard, but there was nowhere to stop and we had to carry on. So we did and after 61 miles (in total) we arrived, in the dark, in Giggleswick. We were both shattered, cold and wet, however there was a lovely dinner and warm beds waiting for us, which was very welcome indeed. It was such a hard day and I was aching all over, my knee was hurting, but pleased that we had made it - it's true what they say about the human body being far more capable than we think, but its also interesting to see how far you can push yourself, even when you think you have no more to give!

We sat up chatting with Robert and Barbara until midnight, before a well earned sleep.