I wasn’t sure whether or not to take the iPad with me this time but my (only?) devoted blog-follower (thanks Susannah!) was insistent that I should, so here goes….

This time I am cycling the Coastal Castles route from Newcastle to Edinburgh with Gwyn and Caroline.  On hearing this, my friends fall into two distinct camps; those who say, “Isn’t there a perfectly good train line?” and those who say, “You are taking how many days to do that?”  50 miles a day seems quite far enough, to us, for our first cycling trip together.  It will hopefully leave us time to visit plenty of tea shops en route!

Planning for our trip was mostly done on Friday afternoon and my packing, at least, yesterday.  The low point for me was shaking out my travel towel, last used by Ed at Beacons Festival last summer, to discover that it certainly hadn’t been washed afterwards.  What was less clear was whether he’d used it to clean oil from a bike chain or to wipe up pots used on a campfire….   Fortunately these things are designed to dry quickly!

After a very humid day yesterday, it’s a bit damp this morning but warm, thankfully.  We have beds booked at Alnwick YH tonight so I’ll set off from here about 8am and meet the others at the station to get the train to Nwcastle.  From there we set off in earnest, along the river to Tynemouth before heading North along the coast.  More later!