BURKEYS END 2 END : Day 7: England! Objective No. 1

Abington to Carlisle 60.24 miles

Time Spent Cycling: 5 hours 21 minutes
Average Speed: 11.2mph

The first objective of the day was to get out of Scotland and cross the border to England. This had been one of our four objectives we set ourselves when discussing the ride at home. The other ones being getting home on day 9, getting to Cornwall on day 14 and the final one being to get to Lands End.

The day's cycling was to follow the motorway which runs up from Gretna to Glasgow, along the A roads A7078 and A702. These are great roads for cycling as they all have cycle lanes (albeit occasionally rutted and unfit for cycling) but best of all is they have hardly any traffic as it's all using the motorway. We got our train moving and aided by decent weather and long downhill stretches we were in Lockerbie in next to no time. We enjoyed lunch in the chippy; curry and chips for me and we got chatting to a local couple interested in our journey. It would have been nice to chat more but his accent was so strong he was impossible to understand!

We got held up after lunch cycling into a strong headwind but our excitement was building as the border was getting nearer and nearer. Gretna Green was our next stop and we stopped off at the visitors' centre and looked on in amazement at the foreign tourists taking pictures of the plastic-looking awful statues of couples kissing or of the even more hideous archway of a pair of holding hands. A piper in full costume played away stood next to a collection tin to add to the tackiness. It was so far removed from the Scotland we had seen and cycled through it was untrue. Still, we spoke to an elderly Australian lady who was fascinated and amazed at what we were doing and she was so impressed she promptly donated £10 to our charity on the spot. What a lovely lady she was.

We left Gretna and there it was, the sign we had cycled so far and so hard to see. The simple words 'Welcome to England' can mean very little to most people most of the time. Sometimes a little cheer might go up in the car or a nod of acknowledgement even. To us we celebrated it with gusto. A bottle of Appletizer was shook up and sprayed about and we all congratulated each other. The ride to Carlisle went in a flash for we were in buoyant mood, we were 'home' and, above all, we could almost smell Lands End!