We woke up on the morning of the second day of the ride after what can only be described as a disturbed night of sleep.  We could only have single sex rooms, which meant 5 blokes in one room.  This meant a chorus of snoring and a mixture of unpleasant smells.

Filled with the excitement of the success from the first day, we were looking forward to the second day in the Lakes.  We were also hoping to manage to ride our bikes a little more.  Day 2 was 31 miles long and the total ascent for the day was almost 5000 feet.



I can't help thinking that Buzz was slightly over exuberant with his warm up though.



The first 5 miles of the ride were on road to Ambelside, which is on the shores of Lake Windermere.  The views back into the valley at Elterwater really were excellent.



On reaching Ambleside we headed straight up hill on a single track road.



It is from here that we got a first real view of Lake Windermere.



We then put our bikes on our backs and headed up a climb of 600 feet on flint and tree roots.

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I managed to show my lack of GPS skills by sending us off track, which luckily gave us some views of Windermere that we would not have got if I'd kept us on course.



Getting back on track meant crossing more water.



From then on, we rode for the majority of the day, breaking for the odd climb and descent that were too difficult to ride.

We also got more views of Windermere.  As we headed east, more and more of the lake was revealed to us.







Even though the cycling was pretty hard, you just had to remind yourself of the beautiful countryside that was around you, as we headed up the second climb of the day to 1400 feet about sea level.





As you can see from the picture below, some sections of this climb were too rocky to ride.........



......... and some of the descents too rocky to ride down in anger.





In the photograph below you can see the path that we took to get down into the valley which runs straight through the middle of the photograph.



We then went on road to the half way meeting point through a beautiful valley with nice neat stone walls.



We met up with Nick and Jane at Mary Mary's Church at Long Sleddale.  We had a picnic there and it was lovely.  The sun came out and we tucked into sandwiches, sausage rolls and cake.



After the mid way point, we had a long road ride up the A6 for around an hour until we dropped off into a valley which looked like it hadn't seen any visitors for years.  The road is pretty busy, but wide enough not to be dangerous.



We came across a field of flowers and the boys found their hippy side with hugs and flowers in the hair.



We then had a shortish climb with bikes on our backs until we reached the top of the moors with a view of Tebay, our next stop over.





Day 2 saw us leave the Lake District behind and stay over in the 'no man's land' between the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales.



click here for Day 3