Green and Pleasant Land

We set out quite late from Irvine after opting for the full breakfast from the hotel. Going was steady for the first two hours, although we made a mistake at Cumnock in opting to continue past the supermarket after an hour thinking there would be one nearer our planned stop two hours in. There wasn't.

We managed to scrape together enough food from a rather old fashioned petrol stations and set off towards Dumfries, where we had an excellent lunch of Chicken Balti and Jacket Potato with vegatable balti. Delicious. I also added a second bottle holder to my bike, essential given the weather.

Refreshed and fully stocked, we set off and had a great run down to Gretna, and we rewarded ourselves on the border with custard doughnuts. It was also at this point that we began following roads alongside the M6, which we'll continue to do throughout tomorrow.

The A6 between Carlisle and Penrith was impressively straight, but set a trend in going over the hills rather than round them. However we must have gained slightly on each undulation, as we found we had climbed nearly 200 metres by the time we stopped in Penrith.

The last leg continued in the same vein, until we reached the summit just after Shap. On the way down JG was practising drafting me down the hills in order to carry extra speed up the next incline - after swapping round I decided to have a go as well

It was working well - tucked over the handle bars about 10 metres back, I gradually accelerated at first. This soon became more rapid and I sped past Jon, only to discover the reason for my prodigious success - there was a sheep in the road about 40 metres in front (which I'd not seen, being directly behind Jon - although I had of course checked the road for corners/cars ahead), and Jon had in fact been slowing down.

As it was, I was travelling down a steep hill at 40mph and had no way of stopping. Fortunately it got out of the way rapidly (speaking to Flying Talbott later, he postulated that there's a speed above which sheep _will_ actually get out the way) so the sheep, the bike and I survived what would probably have been a tour ending incident. Not to be repeated.

The last few miles were on narrow country tracks down to Sedbergh, plenty of little descents and blind corners to keep us on our toes but it was quiet and we had the best riding of the day here.

Bodies and bikes are just about holding up so far, definite soreness has kicked in but we hope nothing to stop us reaching the end. We have an extensive 163 miles tomorrow, off to bed now for an early start!