Lake District

We still have a lot of ground to explore here, but this is a summary of what we’ve found so far.

The route south over the shoulder of Skiddaw is one of the best pieces of natural trail in Britain. It starts off as a steady climb on doubletrack, but after Skiddaw House Youth Hostel (NY287291) it becomes an awesome piece of singletrack with rock obstacles, and a large drop on the left to keep you on your toes. The descent from Latrigg (NY281251) is fast and fun but not especially technical. This ride seems to be best done one way with a shuttle as the return along the A roads would not be fun.

Another similarly good piece of technical singletrack lies along the side of Ullswater (NY400161 to 424196). It undulates up and down, with plenty of technical challenges. The route we did then went over Boredale Hause (NY407157), which involved a horrible hike-a-bike the top of the pass, which didn’t justify the dull doubletrack descent on the other side.

There also seems to be a good collection of singletrack in the Duddon Valley: Park Head Road (NY217929 to 228969) and also around the lesser known peak of Caw (NY250963 to NY197928). This could also be linked with the Walna Scar road over to Coniston. However, having pushed up half of it, I’m not sure I could summon the motivation to go all the way over and back again, especially with so much good track on the Duddon Valley side.

There’s a random good bit of trail on Subberthwaite Common from near Blawith (NY277888) to NY248886 which is quite short but ideal for a quick blast. However, again it’s hard to make it into a loop so some shuttling may be required.

There’s also some good riding out of Staveley (and probably one of the country’s better bike hire shops). Unfortunately, I’ve only ever done it in the snow or watched forlornly with a broken chain, so I can’t really comment. It does have an awesome café though!

Grizedale doesn’t seem to get the hype of other trail centres, so maybe I went with low expectations, or maybe it is just a good trail! Although the start was quite hard to find. Has lots of northshore sections. They seem to have designed the entrance to these to be quite tricky, so I often wobbled and then fell off them!

None of my biking trips to the Lakes have involved camping, so most of these recommendations won’t be that relevant, but anyway….
The National Trust campsite in Langdale (NY286058) takes quite an aggressive approach to collecting its fees, but does give you a choice of two awesome pubs – the Sticklebarn and the ODG. I think the ODG is my current favourite as there was a folk band last time I was there. I also once randomly had a good night in the New DG (next to the Sticklebarn) which stayed open really late, so thus shouldn’t be dismissed either.
The campsite at Rosthwaite (NY256139) in Borrowdale is also fairly aggressive on fees, and a short walk form another acceptable, but not outstanding pub. For the rides in the Duddon Valley, the campsite at Seathwaite (NY232965) was nice, and the pub good too, if you can get a table! I also found nothing wrong with the pub in Thirlspot
(NY316177), with camping right next door. They also seemed to take quite a liberal approach to last orders.