Carlisle To Calderdale: Through The Lake District and The Dales. Over Hardknott and Wrynose Pass.

Trying out the tandem and trailer for our trip in Canada in summer.

In the summer we are doing The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) to Ferne and then picking up The BC Trail to Vancouver. Both routes can be obtained from Bikepacking.com.

I think the BC Trail now might be called The Great Trail?

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) Planning Guide

The BC Trail

So this route is just from Carlisle to Calderdale. We will be doing Hardknott and Wrynose passes and then making our way through The Dales.

The route is below.
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/45823233?privacy_code=g1ozqLuJdIqULkccnLaWB1efAxnSXq9K

So this might be a bit of overkill for a little trip around uh the Lake District but we are um just doing a bit of a test for our trip in Canada as well with the trailer we have done um Tandem and Trail touring before as you can see from this image we

Rode back from Spain all the way to the UK with trailer in tandem it was a really good experience well we’re leaving carile now on a wet morning on his way to Cocker mouth trailer still there yep well you’ve got your typical uh bike pass coming out of the uh out at carile

Which you get uh around all the urban areas which you know generally quite nice would you say y nice and green next to the river so yep nice little start so the reason for this trip well it’s Easter it’s a holiday we’ve got a few days off so uh we thought what

Better way to get a bit of practicing for uh Canada Trip so that’s why the trail is with us no it’s massively overkill for a trip like this but just wanted to make sure that everything works so we just got a couple of hundred mile bik ride over a

Few days just to make sure that we set up for the [Applause] summer and uh we’re going to be taking in a few of the passes in the Lake District we’re going to do uh hard knot and uh rhinos which I’ve done on solo bikes

Before but we’re going to tackle it on a a load of Tandem just to see if we can get a taste of the uh of the Steeps in Canada that we’re going to have in the summer lovely quiet roads I’m going up over there in the distance look how beautiful that is

We’re just filling up on some sweet delights at little and now we are on our way to the youth hostel at esdale for navigation I generally leave it up to Ride with GPS it’s brilliant for plotting your routes so what I’ve done is I’ve just done the uh start and

End points and basically ryro GPS just tries to keep you on as many bike routs as possible so you can see here that we’re actually following the uh White Haven C2C route in the opposite direction cuz we’re going towards White Haven and then we’re going to come

Around and cut back in and then make us way to esdale um so yeah R GPS excellent navigation tool absolutely absolutely lovely morning’s ride today no rain so far which is different to yesterday beautiful views lovely day I’ve just opened my licorice all sorts and these have just come charging

Over look at them charging over the farmer wouldn’t be happy if I gave you licorice all Sorts just spotted a nice cafe on the map 2.4 mile at idale Bridge that’s our next stop for a nice coffee and it was all downhill took us about 2 minutes the Gava Cafe just had his refuel at the cafe and look at this for a view am

So we just come all the way up from from down there and we’re just continuing going up a little bit and then hopefully we’re going to drop down into estd well a few more ups and downs the little ones and then should be sdale you fostel

In a couple of hours or so but look at this View so we’ve just stopped at esdale esdale youth hostel another wet start so we’re in As waterproofs and we’re just going to do hard knot pass and rhinos pass down into amble side and then on to Kendall today

A short ride today um fun little fact though hard knot pass and rhinos pass are actually Less in height than um all the hills back home you know hepton stall and uh wyin and all that are actually higher than hard not pass so fun little fact that’ll be why every 21

Days back home my commute to working back I do Everest which I find absolutely crazy so they’re not as uh they do have some steep Corners these passes though 30% in places apparently 30% so even though I have done these passes on the single bike before and managed to ride

Them uh I don’t think we will be riding them on this we may be doing a bit of pushing so there’s snow up on that Hill there that’s hard not pass which is our aim for the next how many [Applause] minutes 10 minutes 10 minutes had not pass with its 30 percenters coming

Up 30% suitable for light Vehicles only does this clarify that count is out does that count as a light vehicle deep breaths we’ve done hard knot and now we’re just making our way down and then up rhinos and then look at all that snow up there cold part two rhinos part uh yeah

Rhino’s pass yeah so down there just where Rachel’s pointing the uh country file presenters are there don’t know what they’re filming but yeah and we are just going up Rhino’s pass now nearly at the top of Rhino’s pass no pushing no pushing on rhinos so far doing good doing good hard nurn rhinos

Complete just going down now celebrating celebrating with chocolate buttons leaving a very wet Umble side we’re getting us off-road riding in as well going so what should be easy riding is actually turning out to be worse than hard not pass and Rhino’s pass would you agree ritel yes what’s Happ that was

That was the easy part of the day yeah the hard not and rhinos was the easy part of the day always is always is you you think oh that’s going to be that’s going to be hard and the little short sharp things so it was a bit gray when we left

Kendall this morning but the sun’s coming out it’s about lunchtime and we’ve got this beautiful view over there looking over The Dales Nice so we stopped at the new Inn in Clapham last night couple of gray clouds but on the whole this has probably been the best start to the uh to the to the days we’ve had away got some Blue Skies over there so we’re riding all the way home

Today from here so it’s going to be down into col and ni Nelson and then up up tton star then back down in ton Bridge still going around so we’re just leaving Clapp and uh nice day nice morning to set off on which we haven’t had so far on this

Trip but we’ve got it today final day well it’s gone a bit Gray from the optimism of the start so since we’ve uh left settle managed to make some good progress and we now at the uh River Ribble just crossing it quite a big river ta so we’ve just come through

Barnoldswick and making his way to col and then it be up the big hill to WID up we’re just on The Canal at the moment so it’ll be whip hepton stall hon Bridge s looking down on col and then we got to Mecca’s way all the way up there up

To up to widup up there somewhere so we’re about halfway up the hill to WID up we just found this little bench toavs wrap cheese wrap cheese and bean wrap and some crisps and we’ll be making our way the final bit certainly one hell of a pull up from col

On that sust route 68o but it sure is beautiful though our road is going up over there so that over there is cale’s Mountain Pass nearly at the top of w WID up just a little bit further to go there but we’ve come up all from down there it’s been a

Graft it tell that so here we are just going up the final little bit towards wi up Reservoir um quite a steep pill we were following the susten route number 68 from col and um very beautiful Road this cycle this many times and this is hepton

Stall so what did I learn from as Lil outing well the trailer is absolutely brilliant it’s so light as well it’s not it’s not heavy at all I was really amazed how light those Bob trailers are so quite impressed with that um but I think for Canada we might have to um

Leave that at home because it will save on um baggage costs but also it just encourages you to pack more and for for this Canada trip we re really need to be um light as we possibly can so I think we’ll probably leave the trailer at home

For that trip um other things the derer keeps on getting a bit of chain sock when you’re going down onto the smallest ring and I think that’s just because the rear Mech doesn’t have a spring strong enough to keep the chain um from coming away from the chain ring when it’s um

Going onto the smallest string so just need to sort that out but other than that it’s running it’s running really smooth I might put a bigger rear cassette on the back just to give us a bit more for the Steep uphills that we might have but um yeah it’s it’s pretty

Much what um what we need I’ve some nobly tires so I’ll get rid of the mudguards and put on some nobly tires for this for the Canada trip because it is mainly going to be Offroad so um yeah should look even meaner