Day 14 – Into England
My judgement was severely clouded by the price of a budget single room at the Townhouse, Dumfries. You tend to get what you pay for, and, for £42 I found myself in a small one room cabin with attached shower and loo, in a converted shipping container. The nearest restaurant was miles away but there was a microwave and the basics for cooking, and an Aldi on the opposite side of the road. I rustled up cottage pie and cauli cheese with ice cream and raspberries to follow. A bottle of drinkable white finished it off. With all my stops during the day I didn’t arrive until after 6pm, so by the time I’d sorted everything out and blogged it was bed-time: not a good experience. The bed was awful, the base falling apart and the mattress on its last legs, so I hardly slept and got up feeling poorly. My one pair of trousers are so covered in bike oil and grease that a trip to Matalan, half a mile away was called for. On the way there I was harangued by a loony complaining in a loud voice that paedophiles were looking at his bum. He followed me up to Matalan and continued in the same vein. Having bought my trousers, I was able to get away from him. I had to return by the same route so called into Aldi for much the same breakfast as I had yesterday
With all the toing and froing it was 1030 before I cleared the outskirts of Dumfries, heading for Annan, a substantial market town on the eponymous river
It was time to stop and get off the bike to stretch my legs which I did at a bus shelter. Well on my way to Gretna, a town I have visited on most of my cycle trips to and from Scotland, I was shortly back in England
The next three miles follow the M6 with consequent traffic noise but once over the River Esk the road takes to the countryside and is a road I have travelled often.
As it wiggles its way towards Carlisle. 35 miles in, the road crosses the River Eden and heads west. At this point I was feeling rather jaded and needed some food to buck me up, so I headed towards the centre of Carlisle, finding a One Stop where I bought some Jaffa cakes which made me feel considerably better. I was still about 20 miles from Silloth, my destination but a combination of food and liberal use of the motor got me there about 1530 and I got to see the Solway Firth close to for the first time in 2 days
It’s been overcast all day but, once again, no rain; so my shoes are dry and all that was needed was to wash what I wear next to my skin. It’s also been rather tedious with no good views or sights to see. Hopefully a good night’s sleep will put me in a better frame of mind tomorrow for my journey along the Cumbrian coast.
