The Ride Day 5

As I sit here in the warmth of the catering tent it is hard to accept or describe the scene outside. Imagine the love child of Glastonbury and a Somme battlefield and you will not be far out.

We were warned last night that today's base camp at Penrith had been flooded and to prepare ourselves for a challenging night. The Deloitte RAB crew have done an excellent job of mitigating the inevitable discomfort but you can't drain a swamp overnight.

The drying room is full to overbrimming and is an Aladdin's cave of posh but fetid hanging Lycra and cycle shoes. I don't quite get the logic of the 90 per cent of riders who have deposited their shoes there. Do they think the site will be bone dry tomorrow? Their shoes will be saturated again by the time they have walked to their bikes for sure, and they will have a matching pair of muddy non-cycling shoes as well.

My cunning plan (and there is so much about tonight's site that smacks of an episode of Blackadder) was to keep wearing my sodden cycling shoes but inside them to have layers of socks, survival foil and a freezer bag. This way I keep my ordinary shoes dry. OK the penalty is trench foot but you can't have everything,

Today's ride was ranked as the hardest day since Cornwall. We first has to negotiate the badlands of Wigan but did eventually make it to rural roads. All this in pretty torrential rain. I rode all today with Vicky the Demon Descender and we really attacked the first 30 miles making good time and keeping warm despite the soaking.

At one point Sarah Storey, the paraolympian cyclist who was fresh from her 4 gold medals, sped past us. I couldn't resist jumping on her wheel (a cycling expression meaning 'follow closely' rather than anything more literal!) and surprised myself by being able to stay in this exalted company for a reasonable time, OK she was on cruise control and i was eyeballs out with the effort but hey, she's younger than me,

It carried on raining but we were so lucky that our ascent of Shap Fell was in sunshine. The views were great but so was the effort needed both because of the gradient and the cold strong head wind all the way up. This continued all the way to Penrith. I have never had to put so much effort into riding downhill.

But I feel I am getting stronger each day and although extremely tired the thought I have now ridden over 500 miles and my fundraising today reached £5,000 will spur me on tomorrow into Scotland as will the thought of seeing my sister Lisa and her partner Colin tomorrow night at Hamilton, near Glasgow.