JOGLE Day 11, Dumfries to Mosedale in the Lake District, 62 miles

from my trip diary originally posted at Crazy Guy on a Bike

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Day 11, Dumfries to Mosedale in the Lake District, 62 miles

Thursday September 15, 2016, 62 miles (100 km) - Total so far: 569 miles (916 km)

On the ferry going to Arran I chatted with a nice lady, who used the word jolly, as in the Lake District she said was jolly wonderful. She said if I got the chance I should spend 2 days. That might jolly well happen.Left Dumfries around 9 a.m. James rode with me to the edge of town and pointed me in the right direction. I made it to Gretna where I purchased a BIG sausage roll. £1.90. Anyway, it will last me all day. Good thing, I needed the calories. So it was almost noon when I crossed the border. 25 miles.
A bit here about the Nat. cycle paths. They can take you far afield and down lanes with strength-sapping inclines. I actually followed a M frontage road the entire 11 miles into Carlisle. I didn't need bucolic, just get somewhere. James told me to take the Dalston Road. Which I did until I saw cycle path 7, and thought why not? That booger took me to ??# for over an hour lost on back roads and that's with a map and a phone. I stopped to ask a lady for help and then realized she was blind.
I pushed my bike up some serious hills, 17% in Sebergham, and then a super high one that eventually brought me into the Nat. Park and onto a plateau. I cycled down into Caldbeck and into rolling landscape. Then I was in the mountains but on a flat road. I think this area is called the fells. It is so very wild and lonely. By now 5:30, 62 miles and there is no way I can make my intended stop.
So why not, I asked myself. I rounded a curve of little stone houses where there was a car park and an area perfect for pitching a tent. Mosedale. Next to the Quakers Church, est. 1720.
Listening to restless birds, a dog barking in the distance, and watching the sun dip behind Knott, a boulderish mountain.

The Knott is a fell in the English Lake District, standing above Hayeswater in the Far Eastern Fells. It is an outlier of Rampsgill Head, being the high point of the ridge from there to Rest Dodd.
In Northern England, especially in the Lake District and in the Pennine Dales, the word "fell" originally referred to an area of uncultivated high ground used as common grazing usually on common land and above the timberline.