The Dietzes of Durham: Coast to Coast (C2C) 2011 - The Stamina-building Tour of County Durham 1

This year, in a nod to my own mortality and - more pressingly - burgeoning belly blubber, and inspired by two mates [Stuart and Liam] who've run the London Marathon, I've resolved to attempt the Coast-to-Coast bike ride.

I'm planning on the Whitehaven to Sunderland route (click on the map above to see it in all its glory/horror): 135 miles in all, from sea to shining/freezing sea, o'er dale and hill, all on my faithful 21-gear friend here.

To which, I need to get fit. Presently, my only real exercise is as follows:
- The 2-mile bike ride to work and back (when it isn't raining/ too cold/ I know for a fact the wonderful #21 bus will be passing by our house in 5 minutes)
- A weekly kickabout with members of University staff
- Playfights with Liam (which, as his Oedipal complex hardens into a full-blown neurosis, have taken on a more frenzied, and thus knackering, quality of late).

I recognised - and more to the point so did Valeria - that this regime would be hopelessly inadequate prep for four days of cycling, and so I have to build up my stamina, as well as get into the zone, maaaaaaaan, of long cycle journeys.

I've set aside Thursday lunchtimes for a weekly, long-ish bike ride from Our-House to Somewhere-Reasonably-Far-Away-in-County-Durham, and pencilled in some nearby destinations on successive weeks... The plan is a deceptively simple one: set off to arrive for lunchtime, find a local pub, have a pint, cycle back.

First stop: a village I vaguely recalled from a family trip into the countryside a while ago, called Hett. About 7 miles away, up what I knew would be a bugger of a hill (into Croxdale, the preceding village), but surely do-able. And I remembered there was a pub on the village green to slake my thirst on arrival...

I arrived 45 minutes after setting off, and I'm quite chuffed to say I managed to get up the bloody big long hill in one go, with no stops to admire the view/ be revived by trained paramedics.

Hett is a typical country village, with an endearingly, almost stereotypically inadequate focal point in its village hall (note my plan to take a commemorative picture of my bike at the end of my journey)...

BUT, when I got to the pub, the Hett Arms, IT WAS SHUT! Bloody CLOSED DOWN two months earlier!

In retrospect, perhaps I should have researched a bit more, but then, as I cycled back down the long lane leading to Hett, I decided that that would only take the potential for ultimate calamity out of the whole effort - and where was the fun in that?

So I headed back down the hill to Croxdale, to avail myself of one of its two pubs, the Daleside Arms.

Also shut (it's weird entering an open but not serving pub, as the silence and absence of life is eerie, like entering a murder scene).

But someone from the wonderful Franks Carpets did turn up - click on the picture to check out their carefully considered focus-grouped-to-death branding catchphrase - so I could hardly protest... (The pub opens at 5pm weekdays, apparently.)

I cycled back toward Durham, and had my first C2C pint at The Honest Lawyer, a pub/hotel... and reasonable enough it was, too.