Wild Camping in the Lake District

At around the same time as I got the new Classic 350, my son started a new job up in the Lake District, so I'd been planning a journey up there for some time. It's a good few years since I've taken a bike up there but I love the little back roads in the National Park - exactly the sort of place where the Classic is in its element.

We decided to do a spot of wild camping while I was there, so the bike was well loaded up with both camping and walking gear.

I set the satnav for a "fun" route and looked forward to a full day's ride. 

After a couple of hours, we left the urban sprawl behind, heading through Garstang and Lancaster and then the hills of the Lakes started to come into view.

Another couple of hours saw us in Ambleside, where I stopped for a break and some water. 

We left the tourist areas behind, heading out into the small lanes towards Buttermere, but hadn't been going long before I came on a Road Closed sign and a diversion that immediately petered out to nothing! So began a very pleasant 45 minute ramble "following my nose" which was lovely riding but not very effective in terms of making ground! We covered some great forestry roads around the Langdales and Elterwater, before eventually picking up the route again at Grasmere.

From Grasmere we picked up the A591 along the shore of Thirlmere to Keswick before turning along the Derwentwater shore to Borrowdale and then over the very beautiful Honister Pass to my campsite at Syke Farm, Buttermere.

What a lovely site. The car park is separated from the camping area by a stream, giving the camping area a really nice calm atmosphere. This is no regimented flat field, but has tents perched on rocky outcrops and tucked away in little dips. Beautiful.

As I was going to be carting all my camping gear up a mountain the following day, I took my little 1 man "cycle-camping" tent. It cost me £20 from Argos years ago in an end of season sale and has seen me through many adventures. But it was VERY cramped with all of my gear in there!

There was such a nice view over the fells from the site.

Once Andy had finished work for the week, we met up for a meal and a couple of beers at the local pub, before an early night to prepare for the next day's hike.

The weather the next morning was perfect, with a good sunny couple of days arriving bang on cue. We sorted bits in the morning and then set off from Andy's during the afternoon, with our packs feeling very heavy!

From Buttermere we took a steep path up Whiteless Breast to the summit of Whiteless Pike and then continued along a ridge before climbing to the summit of Wandhope. The next climb was to the summit of Crag Hill from where there were amazing views all round us. We then followed the col between Crag Hill and finally climbed the path to the summit of Grasmoor. 

Altogether it took about 3 hours. As we crested Grasmoor, a fantastic panorama opened out in front of us: the Western Lakes; Isle of Man; Solway Forth and Scotland beyond and then the main Lakeland fells.

There was a pretty cold wind up there, but it died down to help with getting the tents erected and we soon had a brew on the go and a big pot of pasta for tea.

As the evening settled, it really got quite cloudy up there, and with that the temperature went down a good few degrees. We ended up in big coats, trying to stay warm. It really felt like the cloud was settled in for the night but then, about 20 minutes or so before sunset, it all lifted and we were treated to the most beautiful sunset that I have seen for a very long time - the photos really don't do it justice at all.

We sat around for a while noshing on some snacks, but then headed for shelter from the cold night and set alarms for just after 5am to try and catch a hopefully equally stunning sunrise. Sadly that was not to be - we glimpsed it through a very brief break in the clouds but then it all settled in again, so we headed back into our tents for another couple of hours sleep.

After a quick brew and some breakfast snack bars, we packed up and were just loading our packs onto our backs as the first of the day's walkers appeared on the horizon. Off we went on the journey back down, leaving not a trace of our presence. That was the first time that I have properly wild camped. It was a very magical experience up there and one I felt privileged to have shared with my son.

The journey down was equally hard in it's own way, trying to maintain control with heavy packs fighting gravity, but a little over 2 hours later we were sat in the cafe at Buttermere with coffee and cake.

After a shower back at Andy's, I headed back to the campsite and pitched my tent there again. Being a creature of habit, I opted for almost exactly the same spot! Being gluttons for punishment, after a late lunch we did a short (flat!) walk over to Crummock Water and skimmed stones in the sun while we put the world to rights for a couple of hours.

On the way back we stopped in at the pub for a couple of well earned pints and again had a fairly early night to recover from our exertions.

And so the next morning I headed for home, after such a lovely couple of days. The weather was amazing - if anything a bit too hot! I headed across Newlands Pass to Keswick and then followed the more direct route back to Ambleside, where I stopped off at the Youth Hostel there to catch up with my nephew over a coffee and bacon barm :-).

Then I started following my nose for a slightly more direct route home, but actually ended up going a bit too direct so that I unintentionally ended up on the motorway for a short while before I came off at Carnforth and picked up the A6.

(I had to reset things at Lancaster as the route wasn't coming up properly.)

I stopped at Glasson Dock for lunch - a place that I had often fancied seeing - and I was delighted to find that there was a gathering of bikes there so had a nice natter with a few like-minded souls over a cup of tea.

And from there, I just cruised home at a gentle pace, arriving back late afternoon.

All in all, a lovely mini-adventure. Great company; lots of magical experiences and memories with my boy; some amazing roads to ride on through the Lakes. What more could I ask for?

Sunny evening ride to Parkgate

 

A 34 mile spin out round the lanes through Puddington, Burton, Neston, Parkgate,

Thornton Hough, Wollaston, Hooton and then home down the A41.

Anna’s first day out

Having built up 50 or so "confidence miles", I felt comfortable taking Anna out on a "proper journey" - to the Middlewich Classic Car and Bike Show, about 25 miles away. I went there for the first time last year, taking Gloria the Honda 250G5, and it was a lovely low key day out. See here for that adventure.

The weather forecast for the weekend was pretty shocking and attendance hadn't been great on the Saturday as a result, but I decided that we were going on the Sunday, come what may! I had a back pack with an array of tools, just in case. That proved to come in handy when she sputtered to a stop after about half a mile!

A quick aside: On the last ride out, I filled up with fuel and then noticed that the fuel cap washer clearly wasn't doing it's job, as there were dribbles of fuel appearing all over my new paintwork 😧. I quickly mopped it up but it had clearly done a little damage around the filler neck, which I have touched up and doesn't look too noticeable. During the refurbishment, I'd made a new cork washer for the cap but it was quite coarse cork I had and clearly wasn't doing it's job. Anyway, I ordered a new proper washer from good old Hitchcock's and fitted that. 

Back to the journey - I opened the cap and a big vacuum hiss was released - a classic case of fuel starvation! I noticed that what I thought was a rust spot on the cap was actually a rusted up vent hole. Out with the tools and my trusty Swiss army knife, I poked that clear and then also one on the inside of the cap, refitted it and she started up fine and then ran perfectly for the rest of the journey.

We took the back lanes through Cheshire. I'm still running in and limiting things to about 30-35mph for the first 200 miles, so the lanes are firmly in her sweet spot at the moment.

It took an hour or so to get there, including a short break to let her cool off a bit. As we arrived and parked up, I noticed that one of the rear indicators had vibrated loose. Fortunately, everything was held in place by the wire so I quickly took the rear light off and reassembled everything before too many people noticed 😃.

The show was pretty well attended despite the threatening weather and plenty of people took a bit of interest in Anna, who was the oldest bike on display for most of the day. She didn’t win any prizes but that has never been the intention with this restoration. The original aim was:

 

"So my thoughts for the Crusader have been that I wanted to end up with a presentable old bike that I could happily roll up to a classic show on and display, safe in the knowledge it would never win a prize for best in show, but also that I won't be afraid to sling some camping gear on the back of and head off to the Classic TT or on a weekend camping trip."

 Objective met by not winning a prize!!

During the afternoon there was a fly past by a Lancaster bomber, which never fails to impress.

As it got to late afternoon, I packed up and headed for home. Another delightful journey across the lanes and we ticked off the first 100 miles just before we got home. The list of "niggles" to sort is getting shorter with each journey. In particular, the clutch seems to be bedding in and making the gear changes generally easier, although I may still pull the side cover off and give the gear change mechanism another tweak at some point.

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Anna P rises from her 40 year slumbers!

You may be aware of my restoration of a 1961 Royal Enfield Crusader 250 Sports, that I've been doing on and off over the last couple of years. The full blog of the restoration is here but here are a few before and after photos to whet the appetite!

So she is now all but finished and, excitingly, today was the first ride and the first time that she has moved under her own power for over 40 years, so a momentous day!

After a little fine tuning, we then started doing some shakedown laps of my local village. I have a test route of about a 2 mile lap, which means that if anything goes wrong halfway out I can pretty much coast back home! 

We did just over 10 miles without any big incident. Four main things to address: 

• there is a bit of an oil leak from the valve cover, which should just need tightening a bit.
• the gear change is a bit notchy, particularly going back into first from second. Some of this could be because the clutch is dragging slightly (the friction plates seem slightly too thick) but I'll check the selection adjustment as well.
• the petrol tap seems to be leaking slightly. I'm going to swap it for one with a reserve on it as well anyway.
• one of the indicators is loose!

I was very pleasantly surprised at how nicely she ran; how nimble handling and sprightly, especially considering I'm running in a new engine. She span up to 50 as easily as the Classic 350, although to be fair, she is quite a lot lighter.

I couldn't have hoped for better from a shakedown, after a complete rebuild from essentially a box of bits, so there is just a bit of tweaking to do and I can start building some "confidence miles" locally and start running in the engine. I pulled the plug to see what that was like and it looked pretty good, considering I’m just running locally at low ish speeds.

I’ve fitted some period throw over panniers so I can carry plenty of tools with me if anything needs tweaking while I’m out 🙂.

And of course I am now planning adventures on her! The first big one may be a few days to the Isle of Man for the Manx Grand Prix - it would be immense for her to make that journey after so long rotting away forgotten.

Oulton Park

Having passed his test and got his new bike, Paul was keen as anything to try a bit of motorbike camping, so we scheduled in an overnight camping trip just down the road to Oulton Park to watch some club racing, courtesy of the Wirral 100 Motorcycle Club

It was only a 25 minute bimble from home, but the rain had set in for a couple of hours, so we ended up riding there and setting up camp in light drizzle. It soon cleared up though and the weather for the rest of the time was great - hot and sunny.

I took my tarp with me, so we had somewhere to get a BBQ going in the last of the rain. Then had a good wander around the paddock followed by a couple of beers back at the tent. I love the smaller club meetings - so much more accessible and friendly than stuff like BSB and Formula 1.

Couldn't resist a bit of artiness, once I spotted the tents reflected in my tank :-).

The racing on Saturday was excellent, with a varied programme including a chance to see these old TZ 250 and 350 Yamaha GP bikes racing again. I love watching 2 strokes racing - something about the smell and the angry wasp noise that just does it for me!

As Saturday came to a close, we de-camped and headed for home, with plans for a longer camping trip next time.

Evening trip to the Ponderosa Cafe

Paul and I took advantage of this lovely weather for an evening spin out towards Llangollen, stopping at the Ponderosa cafe. After a rest we headed home via Ruthin and Mold - one of my favourite roads. 🙂

It seemed a bit weird riding out together on motorbikes after so many years doing it cycling!