The Old Coach Road

I kicked off 2009 with a spot of green-laning, what a way to start !

Jason, my son and I headed out on New Year’s Day to drive The Old Coach Road in Cumbria. It’s a fairly easy going lane with a hard, compacted surface for the majority of the route. The route has recently been repaired with hardcore after a large ‘mudhole’ developed towards the middle of the route. The repair has been very successful with no signs of the original, offending hole.We started off relatively late in the day at around 15.00, so there were very few people around on the road, we only saw 4 people along the entire route. There was a very thick frost on the ground, the weather had been very cold all week, and where water run-off had crossed the route it had frozen into thick sheets of smooth ice.

	Although we were travelling alone, we were well prepared for most eventualities, hot drinks, food, warm clothing, recovery gear, etc.
	The route took us just under 2 hours in total, that was with several stops to take photos and of course to have the all important brew.
	Our plans for a hot drink were almost scuppered due to me forgetting the tea bags ! Luckily in amongst all my gear I managed to find some rather ancient sachets of coffee. Never has coffee tasted so good.
	Towards the end of the route you have to cross a shallow stream, except on this occasion the stream was well and truly frozen ! With the light fading fast, the last mile or so of the route was spectacular with the Moon and Jupiter joining us in the early evening sky.
	The end of a great drive finished in almost total darkness. This made the whole experience even better…