Kielder

I drove down to Kielder on Saturday to meet Jo for our annual (if we manage to make it) girly outdoor weekend away. This year it was biking around Kielder Water and the mountain bike trails in Kielder Forest. Kielder is quirky but friendly and a huge playground, clearly geared up for large numbers of visitors but still practically empty on a sunny but cold weekend just before Easter. The Lakeside Way that we cycled round on Saturday afternoon is over-endowed with gratuitous health & safety notices (Caution! Sharp bend! Steep slope! Loose surface! Inexperienced cyclists dismount! Overhead cables! Fishermen hold your rods parallel to the ground!), while the mountain bike trails we hit on Sunday are under-endowed with directional signage (so that we rode a fair distance the wrong way round a red trail before finally discovering the start of the blue run we wanted). But my favourite notice was in the youth hostel car park. God only knows what has previously gone on there to warrant this sign; or maybe it's just that someone on Kielder Parish Council has a thing about the naked knees of cyclists changing out of their shorts. It's all very Vicar of Dibley.

 

Anyway, we had a fabulous time, touring the lake, taking in the public art sculptures, getting sunburnt, doing a bit of cycle maintenance, drinking beer, eating fish & chips, chatting to other people in the pub and the youth hostel, hardly meeting anyone on the trails, swinging along swoopy single track through the forest. And all only 2 hours drive from home. Brilliant.