Phase two had a leisurely start, using the return leg of my train ticket to an early afternoon jump off at Langwathby Station. Picking up NCN Route 68, I followed empty rural lanes through to Knock - then turned left, onto the highest paved road in the country...

Great Dun Fell (848m/2782ft) is the second highest point on the Pennines – and it's got a private road to the top! There's an unmanned radar station on the summit, part of the UK's air traffic control system. The narrow, singletrack tarmac accessing it isn't the steepest road in the country, but it is the highest, and makes a good test of your fitness. It used to be one of my regular day rides when I lived nearby, but the last time I cycled up it was in 2015 when I did LEJOG the hard way. I wondered how I'd get on this time round, four years older and riding a 2006 Kona frame that isn't the best climber I've ever had. I needn't have worried, just settling in for the grind and going straight over the top without stopping.

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If you're on a road bike, the only way off Great Dun Fell is back the way you came. On a mountain bike, however, you have other options, and on this occasion I took the old mining track dropping east into the upper Tyne valley. This area of the North Pennines took the Dales attitude to lead mining – and amped it up! Once you've got your eye in, you start seeing signs of it everywhere; the hushes, the rubble partially covered in grass, odd pits and hollows, the lumpy skyline. The track, initially quite easy, deteriorated as I dropped, then morphed into lovely grassy singletrack cruising round the bends of a juvenile River Tyne. Popping out next to an abandoned mine by a bridge, I had a choice: follow the rough road in a big dog-leg north then south again – or strike off east across open moorland, to my intended campsite which was only about a kilometre away.

I took the latter course, easy enough with bikepacking luggage. Hike-a-bike sheeptracks and a straight forward river crossing soon saw me pitched up in a sheltered oxbow, setting me up for the next day's planned ride.

Height gain: 726m/2382ft