The last day was to be another long one so I set off straight after breakfast, south this time down a road I hadn’t done before. More sunny moors, which I felt guilty about getting a bit bored of now.
The cloud was thickening up though as I neared Hawick.
Hawick turned out to be that large, tedious to drive through town I remember from last time I was this way. Nearly three miles of 20mph speed limit. 
But after an eternity I was back onto country lanes and things were brightening up again.
The B6357 through the forests has a lot of new looking road surface and I didn’t dawdle until turning off towards the Kielder Forest, for what turned out to be my last sunny stretch where I also crossed over the border.
Riding through Kielder Forest the skies got greyer again and my mind started to get into the ‘going home now’ state. However, when a GS coming the other way turned off at a ‘viewpoint’ sign I decided that perhaps I should make the most of being here and turned back to see what the view was. I didn’t find out though, as the sign said 1/2 mile and I could see now it was a steep gravel road. Not for me. Turning back around I headed of toward Bellingham at a moderate pace, with a few spots of rain appearing on my visor.
After fuelling up and putting a jumper on, I was just following satnav to get past Hexham until I got to the North Pennines, the final scenic section of my planned route. I had though I’d been on these roads before, but they didn’t look familiar, perhaps it was just the weather that made the road to Stanhope have a moody and alien feel.
After a lunch stop at Barnard Castle it was off towards the A1 and hours of sitting on dual-carriageway and motorway, punctuated by half hour filtering and waiting to get into a one lane contraflow. Every time I was feathering the clutch I was cringing internally thinking about that poor bearing I recently replaced. On the positive front, there was very little in the way of rain that was forecast.
The final couple of hours I had a major case of numb-bum but I pressed on to finally get home after 280 miles, feeling totally knackered. Just enough energy to open a beer and eat a curry Mrs Mouse had cooked 
Any yes