Dan's blog.

My kids used to love a book about a sheep called Marvin who always wanted more. He wanted so much that he ended up swallowing the world. Today I saw a sheep that looked like Marvin. Later in the day, I felt like Marvin. Today was a case of eyes bigger than stomach. Cycling through Manchester, Bury and then up into the Pennine hills – about 95 miles that started at 9am and finished at 8am was probably too much.

Whilst I’ll not be repeating this kind of epic on this journey – I had my first feeling of proper achievement. There are three significant climbs in the Forest of Bowland. The final climb is snake pass. You can see the road snaking up the mountain to the peak from the bottom- its awe inspiring. By the time I’d got to Snake Pass – I was feeling tired. I looked at the climb and thought – can I do this? Eventually, after several stops and 50m of pushing the bike – I did it. It felt like a real achievement.

The achievement feeling was short lived. I’d assumed that once over Snake Pass, it was a cruise into Borwick (the stage end) and onto Burton in Kendal (my inn for the night). This turned out to be wrong. There was another 20km of quite hilly terrain, into the face of 20mph wind. It also rained quite heavily. Eventually I limped into the pub at 8pm. The pub originally said that the restaurant was closed, but after lots of pleading, rushed out some food to replace the 5700 calories that I spent today. There is a chance that Ive broken the record for time to eat a chicken burger.