A fantastic day’s cycling – right over the  Cascades via the Washington Pass.

But first last night’s ‘Resort’ provided an enormous bacon egg and pancake breakfast, and we stopped to play with the semi-tame rabbits that live there.

  
Away at 7.40 in the cool, we soon reached the last settlement in the Skagit valley, the Seattle light company town, where everyone works at the hydro plant. An old loco sat outside.

    
But we arrived at 8.30, and the general store didn’t open until 10. We had no food at all, and it was 60 miles and 6000ft to the next supplies. Being impatient, and worried about the heat,  we set off regardless and did the whole thing ‘pane y agua’ as the cyclists say. Except without the bread, and using water from the mountain streams. Madness.

The climbing was relentless, but the views were stunning, first through a gorge and them high above Ross Lake. We had flown over this section last week and seen it from the air.

We didn’t stop at the first pass, Rainy Pass, but shot off down before the final climb to Washington Pass.

 The descent underneath Liberty Bell Spires was sensational. On reaching Mazama at about 3pm we ate the equivalent of two lunches to make up! The first blueberry pie of the trip – and sensational.

In Winthrop, at journey’s end, we were eating ice cream and sheltering from the heat (nearly 100F by now) when a lovely couple and their son came over to chat about our ride. All cyclists, and Bianchi owners. And they live in Michigan, a couple of miles from our route through Marine City. They figured it out from the map on our jerseys! So we exchanged details and hope to meet up, as they will then be back from their holiday.