C2C – A Review – It Starts

By 9am we were all packed into the Transit van and Kevs car and away we zoomed, hail and hearty, up for two and a half days of riding a bike across the width of England, and it was raining too.

We were meeting up with Rod the medic in Skipton and it was while he was getting his bike off the back of his car into the van that the hurricane started, gale force winds and lashing rain, my how he got drenched while we laughed from inside the van.

The weather got worse the further north we travelled, on the M6 the rain was horizontal across the windscreen and I began to doubt the wisdom of even starting a 147 mile long bike ride if it was going to be done in these conditions, but arriving in Workington around 1.30pm it had eased off to the point where it appeared not to be raining at all – and so began the quest to find the lighthouse and the official starting point of the Sustrans C2C route.

You’d think it would be easy to find a lighthouse wouldn’t you ?

I mean, you just find the beach and the look for a big white pointy thing with a light on top.

Not in Workington you don’t. We stopped and asked some BT workmen digging up the road, three of them, all of them shook their heads and said that there was no lighthouse in Workington, one of them laughed as if the idea that something so ostentatious as a lighthouse would ever be considered for a dump like Workington, and he had a point, for the town is a dump.

I could research what the purpose of Workington is, I could just Wiki the word “Workington” but the response would be “Ha Ha!” or similar, I’m intrigued as to how the place ever founded itself in that location, there must be a reason – but not intrigued enough to go and find out – we gave Workington half an hour of our lives on that Friday, half an hour that we’ll never get back, and eventually the “lighthouse” was discovered after we’d stood at the opposite of the harbour staring at it for ten minutes saying things like  “Thats not a lighthouse is it ?” and “Don’t be stupid, thats not a lighthouse” and “Bugger it, lets just start here”.

People – you do not need to go to Workington in your lifetime, I have been on your behalf just so that you don’t have to.

Photos taken in front of what passes for a lighthouse in Workington we set off, intrepid heroes intent on raising £2500 for Wheatfields Hospice after their superb care of our departed soulmate Chris in the last three weeks of his life (current estimates are that we are approaching £3000).

to be continued…