How it began

Start!!

The first thoughts of doing the coast 2 coast came in the summer of '96 sometime after when Steve, Dave and myself had successfully completed The Three Peaks Challenge and knowing that two slightly younger people wanted to do something, more so one in particular as they felt left out (Dan).
As the previous challenge involved purely walking, it was decided that we should do something with biking in mind. The coast 2 coast is more widely known as a walking route devised by Alfred Wainwright, which is one hundred and ninety miles from St. Bees Head, Cumbria, to Robin Hoods Bay, North Yorkshire. The biking route as devised by Tim Woodcock is two hundred and ten miles long.
That's a difference of twenty miles. Well there is a reason. Some of the sections on the walking route are not permissable by bike so it has to take a slightly different route. Although our route is based and followed on the one by Tim Woodcock to which there is an accompanying book, things can change, i.e. getting lost, so a different route may have to be chosen, as was the case with us, but not too much!

The group!!

As there was a group of us things had to be decided like transport, luggage, accommadation and which end to start. Yes you can do the route in reverse if you're prepared to battle the west to east winds!!
The original amount of people was four, Steve, Dave, Dan and myself. Accommadation was decided and to save on weight we would use Youth Hostles. The added attraction to this was a fairly good nights sleep but more important a nice long hot shower after a hard days riding.
Next was the transportation. Easy you may think, but not in this case. As this ride was done during holiday season and for two of us, Dave and myself, we would have to book time off from work, and doing so added another week to go for a more relaxing week in Scotland once the challenge had finished.
The options were to leave two cars at the finish and train over to the start, wouldn't that be fun!! Leave one car at the finish, all huddle into one car, not forgetting four bikes and luggage, drive to the start, and once finished a car would be there to drive back to the start to spread our wings again into two cars for the trip to Scotland. This option being cheaper but not the easiest, or do the whole thing via public transport (except the ride itself). Well you can trust public services sometimes but this option could work out expensive, we did have a budget you know!!
So up till now it seems okay. Now add a fifth person (JMC) to the challenge but who was not going to continue the trip to Scotland and the transportion plans had to be revised.

Luck!!

Yes luck was on our side in the successful planning of our trip. Enter a sixth person, yep six people could the group grow any bigger? But no ordinary sixth member. For Roger, Steve's dad, came along and solved a lot of problems in the fact that he would like to join us but not take part in the actual challenge ride. What did this all mean? Well basically in the short version he would transport our stuff from one hostel to the next by van. He was quite happy to leave us to ride in the morning and meet up when we had finished at our next destination and to do his own thing in between. What that entailed we will never know!

Onward!!

So heads down to find and hire a van which we managed to do. The hiring of the van was greatly needed, a big one at that, remembering that four of us would be going to Scotland after, so it wasn't just a normal sized suit case we were packing each. It also helped with the transportation problem we initially incurred. This meant we could leave two cars at Boggle Hole to which the staff at the youth hostel agreed to keep an eye on, which was our final destination. We would be able to load all our stuff in the van so nothing but the carpet mats were left in the cars. We could all travel together to the start, and once we had returned back, four of us would move onwards to Scotland leaving Roger and John to head south back home, with Roger taking the van back for us. Splendid!!

Booking!!

I can say only one thing on this subject, book in advance!
Although we had discussed, sorted and re-arranged the routes with the help of the coast 2 coast book to fit everything in five days over the Christmas and New Year break of '96/'97 I started to book the van and accommadation about six months beforehand and it was lucky I did as one of the youth hostels we had planned to stay at was fully booked. Oh dear. Well not actually we just booked to the nearest one available making one day a shorter ride than we had planned, but making the next a bit longer, not too much of a problem.

Routes!!

So as to save on carrying lots of maps for each days ride, we copied and cut the areas needed for each days ride with some surrounding area, in case we detoured from the beaten track, which fitted into an area of A3 size and the finished map was laminated. This helped to keep them dry should the heavens (rain) open on us.
I have added a list of maps in the section Youth Hostels and useful books and you will find each days route map in the following pages.

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