London to Barrow-in-Furness

Not all of it on the bike, obviously! It began raining as I set off at about 11am and so I immediately decided to take advantage of the new lifts at Deptford Station to get my laden bike up to the platform and go part of the route to Euston by train.

The journey to Lancaster was quick and quite painless on the train- first stop Warrington! I came across another two solo cyclists heading in the same general direction, one doing the Hadrian's wall west to east route, the other heading to Whitehaven for the C2C.

Grim weather seen from the train

Most of the journey north the weather had been fine but it closed in as we left on the two-coach train bound for Carlisle, along the north side of Morecombe Bay. As we left Ulverston an almighty cloudburst hit but luckily it had passed over by the time we got to Barrow.

After checking into my B&B (the hotel inspector would have something to say about the rather dusty edges of this place) I decided to do the west end of the W2W route that I'm following. Tomorrow I'll be heading east from the B&B and won't go down the hill again, and I wanted to see the town centre and Walney island.

Sadly it doesn't have much to offer, apart from a few fine municipal buildings and the brooding presence of the BAE Systems sheds where nuclear submarines are still built, seemingly one of the main sources of employment here.

BAE sheds dominate the waterfront, right next to a massive retail park

The town centre is pretty much strangled by an enormous Tesco Extra, a Morrisons and a Kwik Save, part of a huge retail park belt around the town. Luckily I found a small chipper after some searching, where I had a tasty fish supper; I did not have to submit to MacDonalds, KFC or Pizza Hut on the retail park.

Fish was not up to much, but the chips and peas were bloody lovely.