RogueRunners '26 Day 4 - Brough, Hartside & The Wall

Day 4 started well with Bob joining us for a drive, but before we set off, we had a problem to resolve, because today was Monday & one of the cafés was closed on a Monday. Had I stopped to think, I had already sorted this out by removing the closed café from the "pace notes" & replacing it with the "Twice Brewed" brewery, but in my haste to sort out the "problem" I found a café in "The Angel Inn" & we agreed to meet there.

So we set out without the SatNav inspired direction problems of yesterday & headed for England. There was very occasional heavy rain, but we were lucky as it always stopped just before we had to get out of the cars for coffee stops. It was pretty much restricted to the highest parts of the route so wasn't really a problem at all. We got a more or less traffic free run up to "The Nook" (again - this was the third day running). We went into Cumbria & up onto the high moors where it rained on us & we encountered a nine car Porsche blatt going the other way but the roads are fantastic, then down to the superb Brough Castle Ice Cream Parlour.

Refreshed we headed for the A66 & were rained upon within 1/4 of a mile, but with the cars doing 60 it was going over the top, so we didn't care. Next we turned off the main road & the roads got even better with a run up to Hartside pass. At one point my heart sank as we came up behind a Honda Jazz, but the traffic was very light & I was able to safely overtake for the excellent run up & over the top, where we saw the Porches again, still going in the opposite direction.

After that was an expensive coffee in the café I'd found, while we looked at a series of photos coming in from Richard as he re-attached his cycle wing in a lay-by, then a drive along the very straight road just south of Hadrian's Wall & past the brewery we were supposed to be calling in at, before turning off to head for Gretna & a re-fuelling stop at Annan before heading back to Ecclefechan, where we were happy to find that Jason had arrived after spending the weekend in Cornwall, driving back to south London, then north to Scotland - good effort that man.

Day 4's video