Today's mileage: 63
LEJOG mileage to date: 506

Map view:

Google Earth view:

And the ride to date:

The trikes spent the night on Danny's drive:

Danny and Jude invited us in for breakfast, making ours before they had their own! Fantastic hospitality.

We decided there should be an official setting-off photo at the pub, with Danny, Chris (the landlord) and Jude.

The weather was again absolutely fantastic.

Our east-of-Pennines route certainly seemed to be paying dividends.

And yet another county dispatched:

I suspect a lot of Roman roads in this part of the world.

I know this area a little, and it's a four-hour drive from home ...

We were going right through York, though it didn't look much like a city at this point.

Obligatory centre-of-York shot:

I thought lunch by the river would be nice.

Now, this is a bank holiday weekend. York is a major tourist destination in this part of the world. It's lunchtime. You would think that every pub and tea-shop in the city would be gearing up with extra supplies and staff to feed the masses.

This is the route we took through York in search of a pub that was serving food:

There was no lack of pubs claiming to serve food. We stopped at two of those. Indeed, one of them had a special 'Bank holiday food' sign out. Neither, though, were actually serving food.

And the one tea-shop we found was closed. WTF?

One of the pubs directed us to one that was definitely serving good, so we set off for that.

Yep, the only pub that seemed to be serving food was ... a Weatherspoons.

By this time, we were 23 miles in.

I had a steak pie and mash. :-)

The GPS then wanted to take us up the A19 to Thirsk. The A19 wasn't much fun, so over lunch I plotted a route taking us off at Shipton and then up back roads.

Donald had bought an extra mirror at the bike shop in Coventry and finally got around to fitting it.

We headed out of York, the city that closes on bank holiday weekends.

And back onto lovely roads.

My quest for quirky vehicle shots meant a quick stop here: a restaurant with attached railway carriage hotel:

Did I mention the blue skies?

The road surface did leave a little to be desired in places.

But you couldn't really fault either the view or the flatness of the territory.

In fact, there were really only two things I could complain about. The first was that we had, for only the second time in nine days, a headwind. This made progress a little slower than it had been most days.

The seond was that I'd forgotten to put a banana in my bag, and my muscles were started to complain. This problem was very neatly solved 40 miles in, when it was time for a cake stop.

As one of the puddings on offer was a banana split. :-)

Time was getting on, and the headwind meant that our plan for today was a trifle ambitious, so I recalculated.

It was, though, a lovely ride.

Crossing the A19 we'd originally been on.

And did a bit more of later, when it was quieter.

We ended the day in Borrowby, after 56 miles. This took our total to 506 miles, and - with our now somewhat straighter route - meant we were now definitely over halfway there. :-)

The starting problem with Erica's motorhome hadn't happened for a while, but had reappeared with a vengeance today, happening three times - the last of them in Borrowby.

The booster pack was now too weak to deliver the required power, so the man outside whose home we were stuck, Peter, came to the rescue with his Landrover:

He also took the opportunity to have a quick play on my trike:

He was a true gentleman, saying we could park outside his house, Donald could put up his tent in their garden and also offering a garage for our bikes.

This was also the point at which Donald had to admit defeat: he couldn't make it to John O'Groats under his own power, having to enlist the help of passers-by for a push.

And the trike garage:

We were now two days ahead of schedule, not having yet had a rest-day. We thus planned a 60-mile day to get us to Newcastle, where Erica had a friend and Donald had relatives. We would then take a rest-day on Tuesday.

Onto day 10 ...