The weather was much brighter this morning, so after a good self-catering breakfast and some photos we returned the way we had come last night to the start of the path around Grasmere lake. Michael quickly went down to see if Faeryland was open this morning, but the place was locked up with nobody around – we had been told on previous visits that the owner opens up quite late in the morning, essentially whenever it suits him, so he lost our business once again.

We followed the cycle path around Grasmere, stopping on the “beach” near the end to feed the ducks with the last of our bread. They were all very friendly – too friendly in one case when a duck flew up onto Michael’s lap to steal the bread right out of his hand. Michael was quicker than the duck, however, who quickly found himself caught for a few seconds, much to everyone’s amusement. Tao put the camcorder on the beach and took some interesting 4K video footage by feeding the ducks in front of the camera.

We continued along the scenic cycle path past Rydal Water and on to Ambleside. Once again Michael’s attempt to arrange a group café came to nothing when everyone except Dillan wanted to browse the shops instead. If only John had been with us, he would have jumped at the chance of a café every time! Michael and Dillan enjoyed their refreshments in Lucindas café, although they felt sorry for the barista who was verbally admonished in front of the customers by the rather austere proprietor.

We looked around Gaynor Sports, billed as the largest outdoor clothing showroom in the country, and several of the other unique shops in Ambleside before buying our lunch and heading back along the road to Hawkshead. Dillan felt a little unwell along the way so the rest of us continued to Hawkshead youth hostel and Michael returned to collect him in the car. By 2.40 Tao had loaded all the bikes and we set off for our long journey home.

An accident on the M6 had resulted in long queues of almost stationery vehicles on the M6 as we approached Keele services, so we pulled off as quickly as we could at 5.15 and decided to take our longer break here instead of at Gloucester. We watched frustrated drivers hardly moving through the jam from our vantage point on the restaurant bridge over the motorway. Things started to move again at 6.40 so we set off for the second stage of our journey, made good progress to Gloucester Services for a half hour coffee stop and completed our journey home by 10.40.

This had been a good tour where we ended up getting far better weather than we had feared on the way up. Using some of the routes we used in 1991 made it an interesting trip where we got some of the best cycling experiences available in this largest and most popular of the UK’s national Parks. We’re planning a major tour to Switzerland next summer, so watch this space to see what happens.