Are you getting wet? I was going to do it this week also but shelved the idea after seeing the weather forecast ie it's either raining or it's going to.
I'm back now.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather - we only had about an hour of showers on the first day, got to our B&B near Ulverston and then the heavens opened up once we were indoors!
It was raining when we set off from Ulverston on day 2 so we spent an hour in a cafe with our bikes (they let us take them inside). After that, we had sunshine on the second and third days.
We had added a scenic detour up the side of Coniston and over to Hawkshead on the second day, and then down the west side of Windermere on day 3 to rejoin the original route just before Backbarrow..
It rained again while we were having a pub meal at Grange-over-Sands but it stopped before we walked back to our hotel. More sunshine on day 4 to Carnforth ...
I had changed the route for the final day - we took the canal towpath to Bolton-le-Sands and then climbed up through Nether Kellet and descended the other side of the hill to the Crook o' Lune cafe near Caton where we stopped for a cuppa, before taking the very fine Lune cycleway into Lancaster. Apart from becoming pretty windy, the good weather was holding so we decided to continue rather than catching an early train home ... We took the cyclepath to Morecambe rather than going to Glasson Dock because I have never been there before but I ride to Glasson Dock every year. After a cafe stop on the seafront, we went back along the cycleway to Lancaster.
We enjoyed the route apart from 175 metres of the horribly busy A590 to get us to Backbarrow. Barrow-in-Furness wasn't very scenic, but I didn't expect it to be; at least the coastal cyclepath out of the town was good!
My friend is only an occasional cyclist but she coped with 20-30 miles a day of the flat to undulating terrain. There were just a few tougher climbs, most noticeably the one up from Backbarrow which consists of a steep ramp to Low Brow Edge, some respite, then another ramp up to High Brow Edge. After that there is a lovely run down to Grange, though we got caught out by a steep little climb away from the B5277 at Kents Bank - I suppose 'Bank' should have been a clue!
There were a few cases where signs had been turned to face the wrong way! One example was just after Cartmel. The official route goes via Cark, Flookburgh and Allithwaite but the sign at Headless Cross had been turned to point directly to Allithwaite. (TBH, it would probably be nicer to take NCN 70 from Headless Cross to G-o-S than to stay on the busier official roads.) There were quite a few unmarked turns which would be easy to miss without navigating by GPS or paying very close attention to a map or route sheet.
I rode my cyclocross bike but it wasn't really necessary - I would have been happy riding my best road bike. The only minor rough stuff was on the broken-up tarmac on the canal towpath from Carnforth to Bolton-le-Sands.
I hadn't got round to putting a rack on my bike so I carried my stuff in a large rucksack - never again; panniers were invented for a good reason!
A few photos from the trip ...