11th June: A Tour of Ullswater
Peter joined Lynne and I on what was supposed to be a Simeon ride. Having come down Sticks Pass I now realise why Simeon asked me to lead the ride. The descent from Sticks Pass was awful, which was a shame as the rest of the ride had been excellent on a warm sunny day.
We started from Cow Bridge, Brother Water, by heading east, then north on track, and then bridleway up to Boredale Hause. It’s initially rideable but slowly gets steeper, (We were sure Brian would have ridden a lot more than we managed). Once over the col the inital short drop down into Boredale is steep and bouldery, so we picked our way carefully down, but over this it’s an excellent and fast ride down. We stayed on tarmac along the eastern side of Ullswater, with many outstanding views over the lake, onto our cafe stop at Pooley Bridge.
We took lanes via Bennethead and Matterdale End to a track that led us up to the Old Coach Road, which we only stayed on until the ford. Here we turned left up the bridleway that led us up towards the Dodds. After a few days of dry weather the inital mile was all rideable, and in fact most of the route up to and over Great Dodd, Watson and Stybarrow Dodds could be ridden if you had enough puff. The views from the ridge were vast; we could clearly see down to Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, the Pennines, across the Solway Firth to Galloway and beyond, yet the nearer Langdale and Scarfell Pikes were in cloud. From Stybarrow we dropped to Sticks Pass. I’ve said all intend to on that.