Forty plus miles cycling and 1 mile pushing - Day 3

Let's get the pushing mile out of the way - Warkworth.  Looks a lovely place, on the river, by the sea, castle, near our destination and ... ample benches to be able sit and change an inner tube not once but three times!

Anyway, cutting short a very long story - puncture, brilliantly fixed - cycled 50 metres, pop, hiss - big hole (a piece of the tyre lever had broken off in the tyre.  2nd change pump, pump, pump = hiss, hiss, hiss.  Hmmm, puncture kit to the rescue, pump, pump, pump = hiss, hiss, hiss.  2nd patch on pump, pump, pump = hiss, hiss, hiss (and that was just the team!) = walk, walk, walk.  

Philip - knight in smelly lycra.
Panniers on the other 2 bikes, Philip lifted the back & pushed.

A more than disappointing end to a great day's cycling.

Mill House, Kirk Yetholm was great; Clare, David, Hannah & Logan were all excellent hosts, the breakfast was fantastic and we were so lucky to be able to wash the bikes, wash our clothes and have a great shower.  We were also £15 to the good after Hannah & Logan donated £5 each and Molly, a mum at the school also donated £5 after Jake accompanied Logan to school.

We headed off with a promise of coffee in Alnwick, crossed the border just a few miles down the road but the 2 Phipps members hadn't got much umph to their pedalling.  So the team fuelled up on caffeine in Wooler.

Great run to Alnwick with a bit of a grim hill going towards Chillingham and their wild cattle (which we didn't see!) and an incredible amount of roller coaster roads.  Alnwick was in the middle of celebrating London 2012 and the Olympic Torch Relay, so we stopped and met up with Barry Greaves who turned out to be an ex-road racer and gave us the low-down on the local roads.

Have a quick look at the day's ride here.






From Alnwick to Warkworth was great; checked out the sea at Alnworth and hooked up with the off-road National Cycle Route 1 - then the puncture.....

Could go on and on about the scenery, the wildlife and the great villages but ... bed time in Amble, bikes into the kitchen, power cut and a weird mix of mixed seeds, prunes and peanuts for supper (we know how we're going to be powered tomorrow!)