Carlisle

Today was planned to be a bit of a rest day before we start a relentless week riding right around the coast to Edinburgh. We decided on the spur of the moment to jump on a train and go and see Carlisle again. The British really know how to do trains, they go everywhere and they go often. £10 return for the two of us seemed very reasonable as well.

We had a lazy visit with only three real objectives - to see the Castle:



To see the Cathedral - a smaller and more delicate affair than many, which also has this really cool roof:



And to buy a few more books, not sure how many big bookshops we'll pass through and we both seem to be devouring them at the moment. Now we bring you this interruption to your regular viewing:

Recommended reading from my pile:

'The Lonely Planet story' - Tony and Maureen Wheeler - This book will cure you of any desire to become a travel guide book author and gives a pretty amazing insight into the development of Lonely Planet as well as the guidebook publishing industry as a whole. For all the criticism leveled at the Wheelers over the years it's hard not to like them both by the end of the book.

Man on the Moon - Andrew Chaiken - While the book is clearly written by someone in love with the Apollo space program and the idea of going to the moon, it also gives a great sense of just how difficult the task was to put 12 men on the surface of the moon and the scientific value of the final missions. I'm still not sure where I stand on the cost / benefit argument about sending humans (super expensive) and sending machines (sort of cheap) but it's hard not to be inspired by images like the earth rise; would a robot know to take that image ? (MG will I ever get my earth rise print?). For moon / space fans the film 'In the shadow of the moon' is about the most amazing space thing I've ever seen, well worth a watch as well.

Tomorrow we hit the road again to continue down Hadrians wall towards the east coast.