Dear Mum, the holiday was great!

Well, I'm back, and more than a little saddlesore! what an epic voyage that
was! Someday I shall have to write it all down, but here's the edited
highlights in the meantime -
arrived in Manchester 10pm, got to Jon’s to find tom already there. Polished
off the wine and slept on the floor in a duvet (best nights sleep I had the
whole trip). set off in the morning 830, a mere 40 mins behind schedule and
proceeded to follow extremely winding and circuitous cycle route out of
Manchester.
Cleared the motorway around 10am into the countryside proper! Hurrah, free
from the city! Find the next 5 miles is on road, through towns. Boo! Adjust
saddle to better suit my height. 5 mins later, I get a 'sinking feeling' and
find I've slowly been adjusting my posture to that of man riding a chopper.
Saddle falls off, having bent the frame, causing some slight inconvenience -
won't go back in until hit (repeatedly) with rock the size of watermelon. We
feel rather proud of our al fresco repair work; smiles all round and
celebrate with chips for lunch.
Exhausting (!) climb over the Pennines (much sweating, cursing and pushing of
bikes, combined with knuckle-whitening downhills at high speed) cracking
views though. Have a beer at picturesque hotel in middle of nowhere. Find a
fantastic disused railway to get us to Penistone at speed and locate a
campsite to the north-east (34 miles covered).
The owner of the campsite seems rather bemused by the '3-men into a 2-man
tent' equation we are proposing. Possibly a little disturbed by the
impropriety of it all, donates to us his sons old a-frame. Supremely
confident about the weather, we can't be arsed putting the outer up as well
as the inner. Then get pissed in the local restaurant. I sleep alone in my
spacious 2-manner. At 2:30 I'm joined by Jon, complaining that his and tom's
tent is piss wet through due to the sudden and persistent rain. I express
concern and puzzlement as to how it affects me. jon clambers in and joins
me. Minutes later, we hear tom wake. Despite our keeping very quiet, he
still finds us. Damn. Tom pokes his head through, asking if there's 'room
for a little one' well, of course, there is. Tom, however, is over 6'3"
tall, so frankly, it's somewhat of a squeeze. He gets in eventually, after
near pulling it down and we sleep the sleep of the extremely cramped. an
awful night - and I hesitate to think what our fellow campers thought of the
three of us coming out of that one tent in the morning, when we had two to
use.
A speedy downhilll to the next point of the railway track blew away the
cobwebs though, and the outlook was bright and downright cheerful. Made good
time to Doncaster and lunched in a field. Knackered, we slept by a canal
shortly after and groaned our way to south of the M64. Where my rear tyre
split and blew out. Jon, surprisingly, was almost MacGyver-like in his
resourcefulness, patching it with a piece of a discarded pot noodle. Panic
over! (Much cursing of the cycle hire company) Jon is my hero for about 20
minutes until he hits 'the wall' and becomes downright surly. We stop and
debate heatedly for a while about pushing onto Selby, where the support team
is waiting. Eventually we do so and limp into the Queens Vaults, where the
landlord agrees to look after our bikes for the night ( a further 65 miles
covered). Beer is inhaled, our support picks us up (Jo and Em) and takes us
to the campsite they've found, which is a little slice of paradise! A quick
power shower and a bbq later, we feel human. Sleep well. (Especially since
em and jo have brought a 4-man tent with them). Get back to bikes in the
morning and ride along a rather pleasant path to York, stopping frequently
to re-inflate our sagging tyres and spirits. Arrive in York! Bathe, relax,
head out for dinner, drinks and to perfect our anecdotes on our fellow
re-union-ers. Excellent!
Hmm. Not that edited really, eh? I got carried away, sorry about that.
By the way, the string came in really handy!