Another wet day. It had looked quite nice during breakfast, but by the time we were ready to leave the drizzle had started. On went the waterproofs.

Our plan was to go to the morning service at Kendal Christadelphian Hall and then continue over Shap. The service was at 2:30pm so we had a little time to spare - it was only about ten miles from Carnforth. Who said we wouldn't make it from Penzance in a week?!

There are one or two National Trust houses around Kendal so we thought we might spend a little time looking round one of them and perhaps get some lunch in the restaurant. However, the first place we tried wasn't National Trust after all and only the gardens were open until later in the day. The second, National Trust this time, wasn't open at all until too late for us. So we continued into Kendal. By now the weather had deteriorated and we spent some time sitting under a shelter in the middle of the town and drinking hot coffee taken out from MacDonalds.

We wandered down to the Christadelphian Hall where they insisted we take the tandem inside, for safety's sake. There was much interest in it, and curiosity about our trip. After the service they even had a whip round to make a contribution to our sponsorship fund. A very friendly bunch of people. Then it was back out into the weather to tackle Shap.

It wasn't quite as wet by now but still quite cool. The climb starts only a few miles out of Kendal, relatively gentle at first with one or two steepish bits but we had the wind behind us to some degree and were able to ride all of it apart from the very last mile or so where it got steeper. It was colder and wetter up there as well and there's not much to see apart from bleak moorland all round, very reminiscent of the Snake Pass in Derbyshire. Once over the other side the descent was fast and we were soon in Shap village where we had a stop for a snack. It was dry again by now and a little bit less cold but still windy.

The rest of the run to Penrith was fairly easy, being predominantly downhill, and we were soon at our B&B on the edge of the town. It was here that the clip on one of the rear panniers broke off as we were taking them off the bike. Fortunately it wasn't such that it would cause us any real problem but it was annoying since it was a new bag. We were taken to our room which was right at the top of the house in one of the attic rooms - after our day's ride it was quite a climb up the stairs. Again, we had our evening meal of sandwiches in our room and watched TV for the evening - no energy for anything else.