The great thing about being a BOF (boring old fart) is that it is comfortable and cheap. You don’t fall off very often, the insurance is only slightly unreasonable and you get as much pleasure at Iegal - weII nearly - speeds as you used to get from topping the ton on a Triumph when you were a SYB (work it out yourself).
So there I was, a born again biker of fifty plus with a BMW R100RS, in my fourth or fifth year of reborn biking. The Lake District was my destination via Blackpool to see an old wartime friend. There is a clear attempt by Blackpool to discourage visitors by pretending to be only a car park, albeit the biggest one in the country. I thought that I might ride along the tram rails but the labyrinth of interconnected car parks caught me and finally spat me out near to the tower.
That was alright because I only had to head east for a few blocks, but then the one way system grabbed me and kept returning me to the sea front - another clever scheme to prevent day trippers from escaping, I expect, but it faiIed because I got excellent directions from a policeman after I explained that l was going the wrong way down a one way street as the result of general confusion, old age and lack of local knowledge.
It was great to see my old friend, Gwen, again and hear about the family; the hospitality was overwhelming but it was time to press on for Langdale where the map said that there is a campsite. The mountains hove into view and I picked my way through the valleys into Langdale, where I travelled looking right and left until I just thought that I must have missed it, there was a very discreet National Trust sign; and there I was. I sat down, brewed up and then looked around and up - what a site and what a view! I just sat there for an hour looking at the hills and crags that surround the site. The Lake District is on a small scale, but it is real mountain country.
The next day I had promised myself a run around the passes. I got away fairly early at around nine o’clock and the climb out of Langdale set the scene, past Blea Tarn and to the foot of Wrynose. At the top of the pass, the view opens out across the valley and towards Hardknott. If I’d been a Roman general I think that I would have turned around and told the lads to go back to camp, but they pressed on and so did I.
The roads were nearly deserted, even in the middle of summer and I pressed on up Hardknott taking the modern, easy route. The Romans just went straight up and made no concessions to the landscape - they must have had legs like tree trunks. At the top I greeted the lone exhausted cyclist, parked the bike and walked up the lump of the Lake District to the north. The view was all that Wainwright had said and I needed a rest anyway, so I sat and looked and was amazed by the silence.
Back down the hill, a quick look at the Roman fort which deserves much longer, a glance at Wastwater, down to the coast to see Windscale, which they seemed to be taking to pieces, and then up towards Whinlatter, staying inland as far as possible along the roads where grass grows along the middle. The Whinlatter pass is pretty boring until a couple of miles from Keswick, where the views of Skiddaw are worth a stop. but I pressed on over Newlands Hause to Buttermere and into the Honister Pass.
This one is quite different, it is bleak, black and brooding, scarred by old slate workings and tracks. The slate must have been of immense value to make it worth the enormous effort to extract it and carry it down. The run down into Borrowdale was OK, but by now the visitors in cars were doing battle with the locals in lorries and the narrow roads were becoming too busy.
My wrists were beginning to ache a bit - at eighty on the motorway the wind pressure makes the riding position very comfortable, but at 20mph down the one in three hills there is a very considerable weight on the wrists, and they were beginning to protest, so I found the A66 and had a high speed blast to Penrith and soon after stopped for a snack beside Ullswater.
Kirkstone was the last pass of the day, and the worst. Plagued by visitors who had stopped in the most unlikely places, I pressed on and came up behind a convoy of police bikes who towed me into Ambleside from which I returned to Langdale. Food. kip and a walk up to Syickle Tarn to watch the idiots dangle from ropes finished the first day, and I followed it with a couple more of pretty relaxed looking around. The greatest find was the black pudding in the chip shop in Keswick - it defies description.
The next day I struck camp, as they say, and headed for Kendal then over Shap to Penrith. Shap was a disappointment and the bike was getting a bit loose at the front, so I pressed on towards Alston. If I think that anything is going adrift with the bike. I always seek to avoid stopping to find out until it becomes impossible to continue - I suppose that the pessimist in me always expects things to be worse than they really are.
A cup of tea and small black flies at Hartside gave me time to consider, and I came to the view that either the steering head bearings were breaking up, or the front wheel was falling out, and whichever it was it was getting worse, so down the hill into Alston. which is essentially an agricultural community and should thus be able to mend a BMW.
The garage was very helpful and lent me some spanners. The steering head Iocknut had simply come loose and needed but a bit of adjustment. Thank God I had avoided the indignity of a ride with the RAC. Five minutes with the spanners, fifteen minutes with the Swarfega and another fifteen minutes with fish and chips, saw me ready to move on, so I gave my wrists a final rub and headed south.
The Stang is pretty good and Arkangarthdale bears the scars of lead mining. They look spectacular now, but it must have been a hell of a place when they were all working. The road rises out of the west and becomes very open and quiet, until you go over the final crest and see the Tan Hill pub, the highest in England. Very few cars, no coaches, a couple of bikes and hundreds of pedestrians. It sits on the Pennine way, which is a bit like a pedestrian M25 at that point. Two of the bikers were on an RT and I half arranged to meet them at Dent, but I was distracted by the crutches that they had strapped to the rack... they both looked fairly complete, the bikers I mean, and I didn't like to ask if the crutches were because of or in case of!
By the time I had got down to Buttertubs I was ready to give the roads best for the day, so Hawes lured me to a stop. Bainbridge Ings, less than a mile from the town centre to the east is strongly recommended for anyone who wants a quiet and spotlessly clean site. There were Dutch bikers and Midland Robin drivers, so we spent a few hours gossiping and reminiscing then walked into town. By early evening the town is much quieter and there is room to park a bike. The Spar shop opens late, so provisions are no problem and there are lots of pubs. I would not wish to give the impression that my staple diet is fish and chips, but I can heartily recommend the fishcakes in Hawes chip shop, they are a meal in themselves.
The next couple of days were spent riding around small quiet roads. Although it was late July it was still sheep shearing time, and every so often a Land Rover parked just inside a field high up on the moors turned out to be a sheep shearing base. The skill of the shearers and the apparent indifference of the sheep is remarkable, and there is usually the chance of a chat. Haymaking was going on as well, and in some of the smaller fields the grass round the edges is still dealt with by a scythe. It seems a delightful rural existence but as I write this in December there is a search party looking for a farmer who has been lost in the snow in Yorkshire for 24 hours, and I guess that it is a hard life in the winter and a not very prosperous one all the year round. The other regular entertainment in these parts is sitting on a hill looking down on the RAF as they fly along the valleys.
These two days gave me time to relax, and then I had to head south where domestic duties called. I thought a couple of times on my way back to Buckinghamshire that I would have to stop for the night to give my wrists a chance to recover. This tendinitis business is amazingly painful and, as I later found out, persistent. It was still so bad after a couple of weeks at home that l recognised that I would have to change the bike.
Very careful consideration led to the conclusion that an R80RT was the answer, so I embarked on a search but was overcome and deserted of common sense when I saw a K100 with Sprint RS fairing - yes, the bars aren't any higher but I did say I was deserted of common sense, and Boots wrist supports are a great help!
Jon Spencer