Dover Durness Day 5: East Cowick to Crook

Distance today         105 miles in 7hrs 40mins
Height Climbed       3619 feet burning 2713 Kcal

Distance so Far       405 Miles  in  29hrs 09mins
Height Climbed      14396 Feet Burning 11218 Kcal

Today wasn't a particularly hard day in itself, but on the back of the last four days, it was hard.

I am tired so this will be an illustrated summary.

We finished mid afternoon Sunday in a hotel/wedding venue/restaurant on a quite country road. This turned into a very busy A road with plenty of heavy commercial traffic on Monday morning and I had to go play with it for the first three miles. A few lanes after pulling off the road and the sustrans route was the old taxi way round an air field now used for gliders and a earth track to the main road. 

Selby was easy to go through, and the cycle route nicely avoided the worst of the A14, and then pulled away to the north.  A lovely tarmacked route with in places tree roots pushing up the surface to provide a surprise/traffic calming feature.

This brought me to teh edge of York and its horse race course which the path crossed over at about 7 furlongs from the fiish line. On past the Terry's chocolate factory, now closed, and through by the river. So easy and traffic free to cross the city. Even had traffic lights for cylists.

Passepartout was waiting Beningbourgh Hall, just north of York. I felt my front tyre going down and limped the last 1.5miles to the car to change it and have a sandwich.

It then rained. About 40 mins of steady rain, and then it started to get hard. I don't recall much after that. The roads remained quite. The wind dropped during the rain, but came back after stronger, It was from the west and strong enough to kick the front wheel sideways at any gap in the hedge.

I joined a B road. I was striaght, busy with fast cars and had what felt like large hills in it which I could see coming. Crossing Bishop Auckland in the rush hour was challenging. Not dangerous, but I saw more traffic in 20 mins than I had the rest of the day. I emerged onto another railway track/trail and turned off this about 2.5 miles from the accomdation. 2.5miles of up, 2.5 miles in the lowest gears, just willing it to end.