48 Hours On The C2C

Preamble: I've been wanting to do a trip like this for a long time. The idea of bikepacking a long distance route, combined with lashings of single and double-track, copious traffic-free secteurs and fistfulls of quiet rural lanes is right in my wheelhouse; so when brother Rob told me he was looking to buy a cross bike to do exactly this sort of thing, you bet I was stoked. For our first trip, for a bunch of reasons, we settled on the C2C, Sustrans' flagship long distance route.

We set a date well in advance, postponed just once, and eventually booked train tickets. We we're committed. And after a few months of cross referencing maps and researching kit we hooked up at Carlisle last Saturday AM, to catch our connection to the start of the C2C. If all went to plan we'd be in Sunderland roughly 48 hours later, having spent 2 nights wild camping in roughly predetermined spots and having put 230km and approx. 3600m of climbing behind us. Needless to say the whole thing was an absolute rippp. The trails were incredible despite the heavy loads on the bikes, and the worst we encountered was a bit of drizzle and a single flat tyre. I shot a single roll of film on a Kodak FUNFLASH (would not recommend), and I'll let the edit above tell the rest of the story. Far from quenching my thirst for this kind of riding, the trip has only served to whet my appetite.

Afterword: What I noticed more about arriving back at the coast was not the distance travelled, or the idea of having ridden between one furthest point and another, but the elevation gained and lost over the journey, being back at the geographical zero-point of sea level.