I finally got round to the September qualifying century. The weather's been uninviting so far this month in the Dales but, whislt not exactly sunny and warm with gentle breezes, Monday looked benign, and indeed it was benign up to a point, that being the point at which I turned southward into the escalating wind in order to go down the side of Ullswater and over the Kirkstone Pass.
I've been meaning to do two things which are a bit of a way from home for a while. The first of those was to cycle along the minor roads which are between the two, at that point separated, carriageways of the M6 for about 3km, between J38 and J39, Tebay and Shap. That all worked out nicely and I thought it somewhat surreal, rolling along in the middle of a motorway. Cutting across from Shap to Pooley Bridge, at the top of Ullswater, was rather good too, with some very nice lanes and good views of the northern Lakeland fells.
The second 'thing to do' was roll along the side of Ullswater and over the Kirkstone Pass, which is a rather fine road with a good surface and pretty manageable traffic by Lakes standards. I knew I'd chosen a day with a headwind but it proved to be a rather silly one with very strong gusts. All fine though, other than that it was also raining quite heavily all the way along, with extra water thrown up off the lake to add to the rain. The pass itelf featured rain so strong and wind-propelled that it was verging on painful on my legs and face - very much not in the forecast. On the upside, it was warm-ish water. The descent was also made more 'entertaining' by sheets of flowing water across the road and very limited visibility.
Still, September and two 'to do list' things ticked off, so a pretty good day in the end :-)
