Penrith to Keswick

July 29, 2025

Today we expect to arrive in the Lake District, if all goes as planned. The weather forecast, as with yesterday, was a two percent chance of precipitation; of course, as with yesterday, that meant it rained……

We slept well until the seagulls started their morning cacophony at 4 am but the upside was that because our funny flat had a kitchen Jill got a POT of tea so she was happy. (All this for 115 pounds; a pot of tea and screaming gulls!)

The living room, or as we called it, the walk-in closet.

One of the several skylights. The controls are located between the door and mirror.

At breakfast I was looking dejectedly at the breakfast menu, the options being full English, vegan English, porridge or…. Shakshuka. Bingo! Something different: Shakshuka is a Moroccan tomato and peppers based dish with a poached egg. We split one Shakshuka although our server, Natalie, thought we were crazy. This is a common reaction at breakfast; they don’t understand why you would split a meal you have already paid for. (Our point: we can’t eat that much and don’t want to waste food.)

Later on we had a very nice visit with her. She was a nurse for 40 years and retired because she was tired of night shifts. Obviously the system here is different: my stepdaughter is a nurse and she only had to do night shifts for a couple of years. Natalie’s daughter is the manager of the hotel and Natalie now works 6 to noon everyday and has time for other stuff - grandchildren being mentioned! She likes it and seemed happy with the change.

Among other pursuits, Natalie looks forward to visiting a grandchild who lives in Australia.

Checkout was supposed to be 10 am but I stopped by the front desk, said we were running late and they were pretty relaxed about it. We got on the road a little before 11 am, which is comfortable for us.

Later Dave said: "It was a 'why we tour' day.", and I agree. The ride was mostly on Cycle Route 7 and on C2C (a popular 137 mile route which goes from the Irish Sea to the North sea, hence C2C), and was mostly nice rolling hills. The first 10 km were consistently uphill until we reached the peak at 10 km. We suddenly started seeing a lot more cyclists, mostly day riders, and a fair amount of road cyclists.

Another mysterious road closure sign with no evidence of road work ahead.

I bet you're thinking this must be Hadrian's Wall. Well, think again.Its Farmer Joe’s fence…….

I had identified a coffee shop in Threlkeld for lunch and it started to rain about 20 minutes before that. The riding through sheep farms on the edge of a ridge looking down into the Lake District was great, as were the wildly cute sheep. At one point we came across four sheep who had escaped the herd. They were trotting towards us and when they got closer they turned around and started scooting back. Dave bike herded them for over half a km until the lane widened enough at a gate so we could pass without sheep drama.

The link below is a 20 second video of Dave herding the errant sheep:

https://youtube.com/shorts/uqOUjzeEQFg?feature=shared

Threlkeld Coffee Shop is about 6 km from Keswick so it is a popular stopping point for cyclists, walkers, prams, dogs, you name it, if you are doing an outing from Keswick. The place was hopping at 1 pm and we got one of the last tables in the corner by the window. The vibe of the place, compared to our last two weeks of sleepy-ish Scottish Borders, and Northumberland was crazy. We sat down next to a family with a black lab, so of course talking to the lab meant talking to the whole family! That turned out to be a really fun interlude. Their oldest daughter was Alice; she was 5 and had just learned to ride a bike, and was wonderfully charming and guileless. Her younger sibling Lucca was 11 months, and their Mom and Dad were Claire and Frankie. Oh, and George the dog was 9 years old. They live in Trentham (between Birmingham and Manchester) and were on a 5 day holiday because school just got out for Alice. (I hope I got the town right: Claire and Frankie and Alice and Lucca: if you read this and I have it wrong, feel free to correct me!)

Frankie and Alice had brought their bikes and the bikes were cool in different ways: Frankie had a real road bike, and Alice’s bike was purple, so that was cool too! I think Frankie was a really cyclist, as we had a serious conversation about how we were finding cycling in Britain. He thinks the drivers will get less tolerant of us as we head south.

You always learn something new when talking to people low to the ground. They mentioned they had been in Sicily recently for a family wedding, and in Britain, if you take your child out of school (which they had to for this wedding), you pay a fine. Frankie said its because hotels in resort areas like the Lake District are so much more expensive when school is out that parents prefer to pull their kids out of school for a cheaper holiday. The fines are meant to discourage that. I wonder how well that would go down in America. Not well.

We saw them off, Alice going admirably well on her bike.

It had stopped raining so our 3 km ride to our next stop - Castlerigg Stone Circle was fun. Suddenly there are just so many people around.

Castlerigg Stone Circle is a Neolithic site, from about 3500 BC, and that’s about what I learned about it. Historians speculate about the purpose of the site, but nobody seems to know with much reliability. Its’s in a beautiful setting however, so its a popular spot for hikers from Keswick.

The view from the stone circle was great.

The ride in from Castlerigg was a crazy 3 km, just because there were so many people out and about.

We pulled up to Skiddaw Hotel (named after a nearby mountain peak) smack in the middle of town. The front desk fellow parked our bikes for us in a back conference room and we did the usual business of hauling our panniers up stairs and down the hall. The hotel is nice (and expensive: 207 pounds a night) and the room is pretty small. I learned from visiting with another lady at the Threlkeld coffee shop that there is a two week Christian Conference here that has made everything very busy. In fact, I tried to book for two nights in Keswick to no avail. We ate at the Brasserie in the hotel but there was only us and a coach group of people dining there. This is a phenomena we have repeatedly noticed - we wonder about the health of the British restaurant industry.

After dinner we took a stroll to the lake, call Derentwater and I will let the pictures do the talking……Short story: it’s a gorgeous town, in a gorgeous setting, but there are so many people.

This park which lis located near the lake was filled with gardens.

Today's ride: 37 km (23 miles)
Total: 3,101 km (1,926 miles)

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