After a night in a Blackpool B&B and after a great night’s sleep on a surprisingly comfortable bed, I woke up and had a quick look out of the window to the street below – and the mighty Strom was still there. Phew..! It’s always a worry when you have to leave your bike on a street overnight in an area you don’t know, as there are a lot of bike thefts these days. It was time to get packed and get going.
Instead of having breakfast at the B&B, which looked a bit doubtful, I decided to find a local café – because if you’re in Blackpool then one of the things that you have to do is enjoy a ‘Full-English’. And I did enjoy it, and it went down exceptionally well.
After the feast of a million calories I hit the road, taking the M55 east and then the northbound M6. The plan for the day was to head north and back to Glasgow, but the weather was so nice that as I was approaching Penrith I decided to come off at Shap and head to Pooley Bridge for lunch.
After a quick look at google maps to see my location I made the decision to ride along Ullswater and then down towards Windermere, which wasnt as full as it was the last time I visited. After drinking the murky remains of my flask, I went north again towards the backpackers paradise that is Keswick – and along some really good winding roads leading north.
Deciding to stay the night in Keswick I found a camp-site just outside the town and was even more fortunate that I got a pitch right on the waters-edge of the lake. It was quite a big camp-site but surprisingly there was very few tents on the site. It was mostly caravans and camper vans, and there was only about eight other tents besides my own.
That evening, instead of welding some meatballs and tomato sauce in one of my pans I decided to dine al fresco and treat myself to fish and chips. There’s a Fish and Chip shop on the High Street called the The Kingfisher, and surprisingly they make their own Cumberland sausage, so I decided to order this local delicacy – together with chips and a buttered bap – and hightailed it back to the camp-site to enjoy my feast of a thousand delights while sitting I my little tent looking out over enormity of Derwent Water Lake. The sausage was perfect. It was very meaty and also made your taste-buds tingle, which what any good Cumberland sausage should hope to do.
And as the golden hour arrived and the sun started to set over the lake, and while I was sitting in my little tent at the waters edge and drinking my post-feast cup of tea, I felt so lucky to be alive, to have my health and all my faculties, and most of all, to be in the fortunate position that I’m able to do what I do.
Life can be very, very good sometimes.
