Just like yesterday, today’s epic adventure started with a gut busting breakfast followed immediately by a 2 mile gut busting 800 ft hill climb out of Stanhope up Crawleyside Bank. In fact we did crawl up the first mile of it ‘cos it was really steep but fortunately we made it to the top without seeing our breakfast again! It turned out that our hotel last night, Stanhope Old Hall, has ghosts. It is a Grade II listed manor house which is 800 years old. Legend has it that in the Middle Ages a young engaged couple went into the house and never came out again. Their skeletons were found many years later under the floorboards. An old ghostly grey lady has occasionally been seen floating about there too . Oooerrr! Anyway we emerged in tact to tackle the last day of our C2C. After the 2 mile crawl up Crawleyside Bank the remaining 40 miles was downhill- Whoohoo! The route followed an old mine railway called the Waskerley Way for miles across the open moorland full of purple heather and fluttering grouse which were all trying to avoid being shot at by a group of hunters. But the only deaths we saw that day were a wee mole and several squashed rabbits and hedgehogs on the road. We roared with gay abandon down the slopes of the moors, through forests, across stupendously high viaducts over deeply incised river valleys, through the glorious streets of Consett and down to the banks of the mighty River Tyne. Then it’s eastwards towards the finish at Tynemouth along the magnificent waterfront in Newcastle, past a dazzling array of bridges including the iconic Tyne Bridge, the red Swing Bridge, the brilliant double deck King Edward VII Bridge and the funky Millennium Bridge. Then it’s on past the old warehouses and former yards of Wallsend (the end of Hadrian’s Wall), the docks at North Shields where the North Sea ferries depart and eventually in to Tynemouth and the end of the C2C. Tradition dictates that you should dip your wheels into the sea to complete the coast to coast epic which we duly did. Sadly the end point of the C2C cycle route, which we have been following up hill and down dale in all weathers for the last few days, is not celebrated with a big shiny triumphal C2C aluminium sign. There is merely a humble fingerpost buried behind a gorse bush on the headland, which most cyclists miss!! Our new Kiwi cycling chums, Gordon and Di, agreed that this anticlimactic finish needs to be addressed and the CEO of North Tyneside Council will be receiving some stiffly worded letters from Auckland and Glasgow on putting this matter to rights.! There was only one thing left to do and that was to eat an ice cream in the car park whilst watching our evervescent Skeddaddle transport guy, Paul, load our bikes onto the car for transfer back to our hotel in Newcastle. That’s it . Job done. Off for a beer now.
Velodyssee 
Very well done for completing the C2C. It certainly sounds very challenging in parts.
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