After being personally refueled I was off again into Ulverston before taking the A5087 towards Rampside, Having ridden this road a few times on my way home from competing in the Coast-to-Coast Challenge. It is a really excellent riding road, with nice sweeping bends, you can get into a really good rhythm, down at Roosebeck I was able to pull over and get my first sight of Roa Island and Piel Castle. It was turning out to be a beautiful morning and I was glad I had got my skates on. The new tent had a lot to do with that, it was very easy to take down and pack up.
Then it was into Rampside and then down the Causeway to Roa Island to then look out over Piel Island with its Castle (39) which is right in the middle of the channel.
Piel Castle also known as Fouldry (or Fouldrey) Castle, is situated on the south-eastern point of Piel Island, 1 km off the southern tip of the Furness Peninsula, protecting the deep water harbour of Barrow-in-Furness A wooden tower was built on the island in 1212, when King John allowed the monks of Furness Abbey to store provisions there. The abbey engaged in much trade through Piel Harbour and further fortified the site soon after the Scottish invasions of 1316 and 1322. In 1327 Edward III gave Furness Abbey a license to crenellate the tower and a motte and bailey castle was built. It was dismantled in 1403 but then partly rebuilt some years later. However it was in ruins by the 16th century. Some renovations took place in the mid-19th century.
It was then back up onto the A5087 and into Barrow, were a I took the opportunity to refuel and take in the floating restaurant/club ship Princess Selandia, former Danish ferry had a long career on the Storebaelt and the Baltic Sea. She is now a restaurant and nightclub ship, moored in Barrow-in-Furness, England. 
I finally dragged myself away and back on the road Northwards through Kirby-in-Furness, Broughton-in-Furness Before turning down the A5093 into Millom, which is a very pleasant picturesque small town based on Iron Ore Mining which is commemorated by a monument of a miner pushing an underground mine cart. Coming in to town I spotted signs for RAF Millom Aircraft Museum and decided to have a look, however before I did that I spotted another sign and went and had a look there first, it turned out to be the workshop for renovating the aircraft that would be moved to the Museum later on.There were two or three things I could recognise straight away but there was something down the side, that looked like the framework without any skin of something resembling a Handley Page Hampden if it was it was going to take a huge amount of renovation.
So here is a Short 360, a very early one at that, behind it is a Westland Whirlwind in Royal Navy Search and Rescue colours.
Tucked in behind is the fuselage of a civilian BAe Jetstream. I have flown in examples of all three in my life, only the Whirlwind whilst in the RAF and I have to say it was the most enjoyable, the most bizarre being the Short, it felt as if I was flying inside a van. And the scariest and shortest trip was in a Jetstream feeder jet from Washington to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, having arrived from Heathrow I then waited around for 2 hrs to take a 20 min hopper flight. Up, level out, served with a coffee by the time the 6 passengers had been served it was time to collect them up ready for the descent. Which then turned into the bumpiest descent and landing I have ever encountered, it was like jumping off the top of your house onto a trampoline then rebounding twice as high, if we hadn’t been strapped in, I would have been bouncing off the ceiling.
The pole next to the boat with the sign, advises visitors to proceed with caution and if the flag was flying you cannot proceed beyond this point due to live firing.
It was then back up to Waberthwaite to get back on the A595 before going through Muncaster and the Castle before stopping in Ravenglass for lunch. Muncaster Castle (40) is a privately owned castle overlooking the Esk river, about a mile south of Ravenglass.
Built on foundations dating to the Roman era, the site was originally selected by the Romans as the place from which to guard the Esk River ("Muncaster" contains the Latin word castra, meaning "encampment", or "fort"). It is currently owned by the Pennington family, who have lived at Muncaster for at least 800 years, the land being granted to Alan de Penitone in 1208. The oldest parts of the castle include the Great Hall and the 14th century pele tower, a type of watch-tower fortification unique to the English-Scottish border region.
The castle was extended and enlarged on a number of occasions over the course of the centuries. Recent historical research (in the early 2000s) has uncovered records which indicate that in 1678 the castle had 14 chimneys; while a document relating to payment of Window Tax in 1746 recorded at that date it had 103 windows and 55 rooms and corridors.
However, by the time of the ownership of Sir Joseph Pennington in the 1770s, the castle had fallen into serious decay. His son, Sir John Pennington, arriving to live at the castle after his wedding in 1778, wrote with despair of how a part of building collapsed even as he was inspecting it. The preservation of the castle to this day is due to the efforts of Sir John Pennington to rebuild and restore it; surviving records indicate that this cost him some six thousand pounds, an enormous sum of money for the late 18th century.
The recent historical research project mentioned on the Castle's official website has also revealed that the castle's north tower (which complements the pele tower to provide a symmetry to the castle's appearance) was constructed in the 1830s. Some previous literature on the north tower mistakenly attributes its construction to the architect Anthony Salvin, who was engaged to refurbish the castle by the fourth Lord Muncaster in 1862.
The castle contains a wealth of architectural features and artefacts from a wide span of English history, including a rare portrait of king Henry VI, an Elizabethan banqueting table, and also an impressive library containing approximately 6,000 books. In August 2005, some archaeological investigation was conducted in the castle grounds and an Architectural Heritage Report was produced. It is planned to conduct a full architectural survey in the future, to examine the different phases of the building's construction.
I pulled over in front of a lovely Rosegarth Guesthouse and went in for a cup of tea and a baguette, I say baguette it was more like a french stick. Denise and Neil are ideal hosts and they are Bikers Friendly, even advertising the fact on their website. Neil owns a Harley, well no one can be perfect. But the view wasn’t far off.
After a sumptuous lunch and a great pot of Earl Grey tea I was underway again. Back up on to the A595 before the loop through Drigg and Seascale on the B5344, coming out of the latter I passed the rear entrance to the Sellafield Complex, it was then back up to Gosforth before coming off at Calder Bridge before turning off back down towards the Sellafield site.The Calder name struck a cord with me and I did some research on the name that was in the back of my mind. Calder Hall. It was the world's first nuclear power station to deliver electricity in commercial quantities (although the 5 MW "semi-experimental" reactor at Obninsk in the Soviet Union was connected to the public supply in 1954). The design was codenamed PIPPA (Pressurised Pile Producing Power and Plutonium) by the UKAEA to denote the plant's dual commercial and military role. Construction started in 1953. Calder Hall had four Magnox reactors capable of generating 50 MWe of power each. The reactors were supplied by the UKAEA and the turbines by C.A. Parsons & Company. First connection to the grid was on 27 August 1956, and the plant was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 17 October 1956. When the station closed on 31 March 2003, the first reactor had been in use for nearly 47 years.
However, in its early life, it was primarily used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, with two fuel loads per year, and electricity production as a secondary purpose. From 1964 it was mainly used on commercial fuel cycles, but it was not until April 1995 that the UK Government announced that all production of plutonium for weapons purposes had ceased.
The four Calder Hall cooling towers were demolished by controlled explosions on Saturday 29 September 2007.
Also on the same site was The Windscale Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (WAGR) was a prototype for the UK's second generation of reactors, the Advanced gas-cooled reactor or AGR, which followed on from the Magnox stations. The WAGR golfball is, along with the Pile chimneys, one of the iconic buildings on the Windscale site (Windscale being an independent site within the Sellafield complex). Construction was carried out by Mitchell Construction and completed in 1962. This reactor was shut down in 1981, and is now part of a pilot project to demonstrate techniques for safely decommissioning a nuclear reactor.
There is a huge amount of information about the Sellafield site on Wikipedia and I am amazed at how much goes on there. Anyway I couldn’t hang around I wanted to get Carlisle by the end of the day, although I had the Tuesday off I still wanted to get home at a reasonable time, so I thought if I got to Carlisle at a reasonable time I could start my way home, before stopping off in the Southern Lakes somewhere around Kendal for the night.
Up the road a short way to Beckermet before turning off for the coast road down through Nethertown and Middletown before entering St Bees, only to be thwarted part way due to a road closure for some form of drainage works, unfortunately the workers had moved the signs so they could get their vehicles down without replacing them, so I got a mile down the road before being met with the sight of a JCB excavator hard at work ripping up the road. So it was a case of an 8 point turn even for me on the single track road. The diversion didn’t cost me that much in time just the inconvennience. I got back on to the back lane at Coulderton before coming down the hill Into St Bees. The Golf Course which you can just make out in the middle of the picture looked a serious challenge, sat high on the cliff tops.
St Bees is a lovely little town based around a large public school, I had time to take in the station thanks to a freight train that decided to collect the mail as well as talking with the female station master, or that is how it appeared, as we were stood at the level crossing for an awfully long time for an old Diesel Engine pulling three tanker trucks.
Just beyond the station is the school and some of the pupils were involved in a Cricket Match. I don’t know it’s history at producing England Test Cricketers but from what I witnessed over the tens of minutes I watched it was quite impressive, I know the batsman and the bowler would certainly get into our Village team.
On out of the town and on my way through Sandwith then in the back ‘back way’ into Whitehaven I came across an almost bizarre sight, lines of fencing and turnstiles to get through a certain points, to an area that seemed to have been recently demolished, leaving no evidence of what might have been in place. After a lot of research it turned out to be the site of a major Soap factory owned by Marchon and then a chemical factory owned eventually by Allbright and Wilson.
It was established during the Second World War in 1940, was taken over as part of Allbright and Wilson in the 60’s. and before it was closed and ultimately demolished it had a number of credits and was actually one of the largest employers in the region at it’s height; at over 2,500. It won it’s first Queens Awards for Export in 1966.
The 1990’s saw the start of the decline as environmental issues based around the chemicals and acids being produced on site started to bear heavily on the organisation. Including a private prosecution by Greenpeace due to the discharges, led Greenpeace to go one further by blocking the outfall discharge into the Irish Sea as one of their protests.
In 1994 Allbright and Wilson tried to re-launch the factory and invested heavily in a new plant in 1997 however 2 years later Allbright and Wilson was taken over by the French company Rhodia, It was then bought again by the American organisation Huntsman in 2001, before finally being run down in 2004 and finally closed in 2005. During it’s time it was the Was the largest single-site producer of Sulphuric Acid in Europe as well as the largest single-site producer of Sodium Tripolyphospate in the world. Now it is a deserted demolition site and those two statistics are probably the reason why, it will be a long time before it is fit for anything else.
Whitehaven seemed almost like a ghost town riding through, a large number of boarded up buildings the one saving grace was, the sun was shining if it hadn’t it would have looked even more depressing and then I reached the Marina and Harbour.
I must have got something wrong about how depressed things were as there were a number of decent looking and probably expensive vessels moored. I then looked at the history a little bit more. Whitehaven Harbour has seen all kinds of action, the John Paul Jones attempt of attacking the harbour being one of the most dramatic – or at least it could have been had not his fellow sailors gone to the pub and stayed there!
John Paul Jones was a Scot who had learnt his seafaring trade in Whitehaven and who would become the founding father of the American navy. After sailing to America on the "Friendship of Whitehaven", Jones grew up as an adopted American - returning to Whitehaven in the late 1770s. During this time, the wars of independence were playing out and John Paul Jones, now a commander in the Continental Navy set sail for Europe.
In 1778, The Ranger was sailing up the western coast, causing havoc on British vessels.Whitehaven was the only harbour where Jones and his crew landed - which turned out to be a minor misfortune. The American sailors sneaking up at night and coming up these stairs, overpowering the pier master to keep his silence. And then his boats had the intention of coming into this inner harbour on the tide.
The old ships and briggs and brigantines, schooners were really thick, piled in here either loading cargo or waiting cargo or whatever and the intention was to set fire to the whole fleet and cause havoc. It didn’t come off because I think from the report the American sailors came ashore and got sniff of the rum and beer locally and ended up a little bit tight and went back out to sea with the tails between their legs.
Paul Jones and the Ranger continued up the coast, without getting off the ship.
During the first Maritime Festival in 1999, American Marines travelled up to Whitehaven to take part in the festival. On the Sunday of that first festival, Mr Allen, then harbourmaster, together with the harbour commission and an officer from the American navy signed a proclamation forgiving the 1778 raid by John Paul Jones and the American navy. The Americans took this very seriously and that proclamation ended up on the desk of Bill Clinton.
It’s now on display in the American navy academy at Anapolis in Maryland, another copy is in the Beacon Centre and the third copy is in the harbour commission’s office. The signing is now celebrated each year with a visit by a contingent from the US Navy to the Festival. Other notable bits of Trivia about Whitehaven and a further link to America, George Washington’s Grand mother is buried in the town and finally during the 18th Century it was the third largest port in the UK behind London and Bristol.
Out through Lowca and it was then into Workington which seems to be less effected by the economic troubles and a number of industries can be witnessed, one thing that was evident was not only the Wind Turbines but a number of modern factories and warehouses on the road North out of town to Maryport.
Now given I know of the history of rivalry between the two town and the fact one of my best friends is a Director of Workington Town Rugby League Club, I thought I better do some research on this Cumbria icon as well. I had only done as much on Whitehaven because of what I had witnessed and the fact around John Paul Jones I saw on the BBC series Coast.
Workington is an ancient market and industrial town at the mouth of the River Derwent. Some parts of the town north of the River Derwent date back to Roman times. It was in the 18th century, with the exploitation of the local iron ore and coal pits, that Workington expanded to become a major industrial town and port.
Iron and steel manufacture have always been part of Workington's heritage, and it was here that the famous Henry Bessemer first introduced his revolutionary steel making process. In recent years, with the decline of the steel industry and coal mining, the town has diversified into other forms of industry.
Workington formerly manufactured 'Railbus' and 'Sprinter' type commuter trains and Leyland National buses. The Leyland National was based on an Italian design, which included an air conditioning unit mounted in a pod on top of the roof of the bus at the rear. Adapting the design for Britain, Leyland replaced the air conditioning unit with a heating unit. However, as hot air rises, much of the heat generated by the heaters was wasted as it escaped out of the top (most vehicle heaters are located low down in the vehicle). This design flaw in the National bus became infamous in certain circles.
The 'Railbus' trains were based on the National bus design, designed as a cheap stopgap by British Rail. This initiative led to Workington's brief history of train manufacturing, the buses already being built there. They are generally considered a poor design, and are very uncomfortable to ride especially on less-than-perfectly-smooth rail lines, as the carriages tend to jump about much more than most trains. This is due to the fact that they are not equipped with proper train bogies, but have two single axles per carriage (each train consists of two carriages), a cost-cutting design feature which when they have been worked on some lines has also caused problems with rounding tight-radius corners. Some industry experts have also raised significant doubts about their level of safety compared to other commuter train types, such as the Sprinter.
Having traveled on both of these I can fully understand why they failed, I won’t play the political card but both these forms of transport were promoted by one particular government and thank god the transport media has gone if not the government, shall we say.
Leaving Workington behind it is only 5 miles up the road before I hit Maryport. The town was first established as the Roman fort Alauna in around AD 122 as a command and supply base for the coastal defences of Hadrian's Wall at its western extremity. In the early 20th it had less attractive historical fact to it’s name when unemployment in the town exceeded 50%. And whilst the area is starting to enjoy slightly better times it is now more famous for it’s annual Blues Festival. The 11th Maryport Blues Festival takes place over the weekend of July 24th, 25th & 26th July, when the small Cumbrian harbour town will once again be alive with the best in blues music on offer.
This year, over 40 bands and 150 individual musicians from all over the globe will be performing in the main stage marquee, in the pubs and clubs and on an outdoor stage and on the street, to thousands of visitors from all over the UK. Headliners Jethro Tull, John Mayall and Eric Burdon are supported by Ruby Turner and The Blues Band amongst many others.
It was now 3.40pm and I needed to get a move on and shortly after leaving Maryport I turned off on to the B5300 to Silloth, stopping briefly for a photo and a drink at Crosscanonby and my first real look at the Solway Firth towards Scotland.
I then had a good run up the coast through Allonby and Beckfoot before entering Silloth. the town is a small holiday resort, developed in the 1860s around the terminus of a railway from Carlisle which had begun construction in 1855. For the first time, workers from the factories of Carlisle were presented with affordable access to the seaside and the town flourished as a destination for day trippers. After its heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Silloth slipped into disrepair, as other resorts became more accessible however recent years have seen a great deal of development with many of the sea facing properties having received long overdue facelifts. The main central attraction is a large expansive green that is utilised throughout the year to host various events and activities. Amenities include a championship golf course ranked amongst the country's top fifty courses.
The B5302 took me back out and on my way to the next Airfield on the list and parity with castles at 40 a piece. RAF Kirkbride was extremely hard to find information about, despite its relatively long history first opened in 1939 and remained open for use by the RAF and remained that way until May 1960. Its primary function was as a care & maintenance base both 12 MU and 22 MU (Maintenance Units) having both been based there. It’s main function was to keep aircraft prior to being delivered from factories until they could be accepted to full time active squadrons, the idea that aircraft were being kept as far as practical from the action until needed. A long list of famous aircraft went through Kirkbride including, Fairy Battles, Spitfires, Hurricanes, Avro Lancasters, Halifaxes and Liberators. Last official aircraft to be flown out from the airfield was a mk14 Gloster Meteor in 1960. Today Kirkbride is still a huge site with private flying taking place off the remaining main runway and all the main hangers still intact and being used for various things, sadly none of them appear aviation related as in most cases like this they become ideal bases for transport and storage companies.To be honest I hadn’t spotted this airfield during my preparation for the trip I was more focused on what I was about to find just a couple of miles up the roads at Cardunock.
You can actually see one of the secondary runways in the above photo. The Royal Navy bagged the site in December 1942, building RNAS Anthorn, eventually being commissioned in September 1944, and given the title 'HMS Nuthatch' . RNAS Anthorn operated well past WWII as No:1 ARDU (Aircraft Receipt and Dispatch Unit), and the last 'official' aircraft left the runway in November 1957. The base was put into 'mothballs', finally closing down in March 1958. It is now used as a VLF and LF transmitting station, I won’t say what the VLF is used for but the LF is used by The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) who have installed three atomic clocks at Anthorn and on 27 February 2007 Britain’s national time signal transmissions, retaining their original call sign of MSF, were transferred there on a trial basis, moving formally on 1 April 2007 Monitoring and logging of the clocks and control of the transmissions is by internet link from the NPL offices at Teddington, using comparison with GPS signals at both locations. So in one way they help keep my wristwatch accurate, which is a Casio Waveceptor which relies on these radio signals to keep it accurate.
For a few months in 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned within the castle. Later the castle was besieged during the English Civil War in 1644 by the Parliamentary forces which lasted 8 months.
The most important battles for the city of Carlisle and its castle were during the second Jacobite rising against George II of Great Britain in 1745. The forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart travelled south from Scotland into England reaching as far south as Derby. Carlisle and the castle were seized and fortified by the Jacobites. However they were driven north by the forces of the William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the son of George II. Carlisle was recaptured and the Jacobites were jailed and then executed. That battle marked the end of the castle's fighting life, as defending the border between England and Scotland was not necessary as both countries were again one in Great Britain.
Some parts of the castle were then demolished for use as raw materials in the 19th century to create more or less what is visible to the visitor today. The Army moved in to take hold of the castle, which was the regimental depot of the Border Regiment until 1959, with control for maintenance passing to the Department of Environment later English Heritage.
After refueling on the outskirts of Carlisle it was on to the A6 South. With the idea of getting to Penrith then finding somewhere, 20 mins late I reached the sign post for the M6 at Plumpton Head and it wasn’t 6.00pm yet so I decided to push on to Kendal, the roads were empty so I flew down within half an hour I was at the turn off to Kendal and I started to think I’m feeling good the roads are good and I’m making good time so let’s see how far I can get before it starts to be a problem. By 7.30pm I had actually passed Preston and still making good time, in fact I was just coming up on Wigan, I started to think about going all the way through.
Anyway I thought I would just go on until I couldn’t go any further and after another Fuel stop just above Birmingham, when I loaded up on Red Bull as well, I only had to stop one more time to rest my poor backside as it was killing me.
I eventually got everything off the bike and me indoors with a cup of tea at just before 11.00pm over 13 hours of riding and lot of miles covered in fact the best part of 1,300 in the weekend. Despite the weariness and the pain I also felt a huge amount of achievement.
All that is left to do now is spend the best part of two weeks writing up my notes and rebuild the bike again. It sounds as if she is knackered, far from it, it is just the case that all the miles I am doing do take a toll of the bike and things like tyres wear out, but more of that in the next post.
Take care and as Mick says ‘You don’t stop riding when you get old, you stop because your rear tyre is no longer legal!
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