Day 6 Canal Ride and Shap

Today has been a real mixed bag. We had only done about 15 miles by 2pm and yet still managed to do 74 miles total including the 1400ft ascent over Shap.
Two reasons for the poor start:
1) We had agreed to meet Martin for a 7:30am breakfast, which was precisely the time when Rob & I roused from our beauty sleep (which still hadn't worked). It took a good half hour to do the stuff men do in the mornings before going to breakfast!
2) Rob managed to loose the key to his padlock which had all 3 bikes cabled together.
Rob had poo-pooed the notion of a key fob as that would have been far too heavy. Luckily, just as I was heading off to turn over our room to find it, and Martin got ready to throttle Rob, he found it in his loose change pocket, which at that stage resembled a penny arcade slot machine trough after the big win !!

It started to rain, but I felt the best early morning health that I have yet on the trip and shot off to Lancaster arriving first.
I found a fantastic purveyor of tea and Coffee but alas it was only in packets and not in cups.
When I saw Martin he was on a mission to find a chemist for an ankle support for a new achiles problem. This could prove to be a game over scenario for Martin so we all wish him well.
Bizarely my highlight of the day then came next, Martin detoured down the Lancaster to Carnforth canal cycle path, which was perfectly flat in macro scale, but rather unsuited to Rob and My specialist road bikes in micro scale terms. It was a completely different world to say the A30 from Day1.  I was very tempted to shove Rob & his bike in to the canal as Martin was videoing it and the £250 you've been framed money would have helped the sponsorship total!
It started to chuck it down so Rob decided he would shelter under a bridge. I was in two minds whether to go on with Martin or stay with Rob. I stayed with Rob in the end and we spent a good 40 minutes waiting for the rain to stop.
We didn't meet up with Martin again until Kendal.
We then set off on the BIG climb up Shap Fell. Martin insists he was only using one foot, but I don't believe him judging on the rate he shot by me.  I had to keep stopping to avoid expelling both lungs out of my mouth !
I took a picture at the top.
The ride down gave me my first chance to spin my 16th gear, doing about 40mph. 
I met up with Rob at Shap, and we sat in the sun outside a pub feeling very proud of ourselves. 
Martin, phoned me from Penrith to say he wanted to push on to Carlisle making a total of about another 28 miles from where we were and it was 5:30pm by then. I agreed and we managed to get there by 7:30pm.
Martin had managed to get us rooms at the Ibis hotel.
As luck would have it there was an all-you-can-eat Chinease Buffet right next door.  We each had at least 3 plate fills and Rob had 4 !  We reckon their business plan should include banning end to enders.
Martin and I then went to sample Wetherspoons to check if they're the same as down South.  They are.
The plan now for tomorrow is get to Edinburgh where we could get to have a day off exploring the City on Thursday as we've done so well thus far.
My LEJOG book reckons we've done 547 miles in 6 days :O) and my crutch now would concurr!