Sexagenarians Cycle Coast to Coast – Shock Horror!

Isn’t it true that the ‘exception proves the rule?’ Okay, so one of our nine cyclists was 59 years old, but the other eight were well into their sixties so we’re happy that an aggregated age of 570 meets the group criteria for ‘sexagenarians.’ Five men, four women – all of whom displayed their own particular strengths throughout the five days.

Our task? To dip our back tyres into the Irish Sea at Whitehaven on a Tuesday afternoon and to dip our front tyres into the North Sea at Tynemouth the following Saturday morning. This entails, of course, a tough 140 miles cycle over The Pennines with hard-to-resist real ale quaffing stations,  in hotels of varying quality, in between. To be fair, there was commendable restraint on the quaffing front at least until the Friday night in Gateshead. The fact is that this was a demanding event for each and every one of us and though…