The mood in my local boozer was incredulous. Bicycling? In the Lake District? All those mountains? Are you nuts? But I was quietly confident: Guy Fitzgerald, the nice guy from Country Lanes, in Windermere, had promised not steepling fells, but kindly undulations. “Don’t worry,” he said, when I phoned. “We’ll find you the flattish bits.”

What’s more, I could leave my car at home. Country Lanes is based right on the platform at Windermere station, so you can jump off the 8.46 from Euston and straight onto your Trek 3900 two-wheeler. All that remained was for me to talk my friend Denise into tagging along. “You’re sure he said it will be flat?” she asked doubtfully.

“Flattish.” I feared the -ish might be an issue.

DAY 1 Windermere to Bowness

12.30pm: Guy is at the station to fix up our bikes, maps and hotel vouchers. One look at us and he suggests the “gel saddle” option – a sort of slide-on rubber sheath that cushions your ride. Not sure I need this, having lavished years of cake and ale consumption on developing an in-built version – but it turns out to be the best £1 supplement I’ve paid on holiday, ever. Away we wobble, past the retail park towards what look suspiciously like mountains. 1.16pm: time for a rest. We’ve walked up only two hills so far and received only one impromptu offer of a truck ride back to town. We’re glad we didn’t accept. We are now up above Outrun Nook, sitting on a grassy pouf, contemplating a scene that is utterly, emptily gorgeous. Guy’s route has taken us out into the high hinterland south of Windermere, where the landscape crinkles and corrugates into a tangle of tree and pasture, scattered with slate. This is a knobbly countryside with no lakes in it. No people, either. Even the sheep don’t look you in the eye.

4pm: we’ve spent the past couple of hours on a pellmell pedal through what locals call “damson country”, heads skimming just above the hedgerows, mostly panting for puff, occasionally whooping in adrenalised delight. So we reckon we’ve earned our crisp glass of Catnip ale on the terrace of the Punch Bowl Inn, at Crosthwaite (01539 568237, www.the-punchbowl.co.uk ), a rather posh place with avocado paintwork, chocolate-leather chair-ettes and pan-seared salmon niçoise with quail’s eggs. Here, we are approached by a chap with a crimson nose and breeches floppy enough to hold several ferrets. “Look at that view,” he says, waving his pint at a sliver of silver on the horizon. “That’s Whitbarrow Scar is that. If southerners knew how grand that looked, there’d be thousands on ’em ’ere today.” We mmm our agreement, afraid to say anything more in case he rumbles our accents.

6.35pm: the folk at the Fayrer Garden House Hotel (015394 88195, www.fayrergarden.com ) recognise us as cyclists the moment we stagger through the door, presumably by our pair-of-tweezers gait. Today’s 15-mile loop to Bowness has taken longer than projected, mostly thanks to pubs, and we’re more than ready to collapse into a gin and tonic, followed by a Kentmere lamb supper. The hotel is perfect for soothing saddle sores, homely and immaculate at the same time.

DAY 2 Bowness to Lakeside

10am: Bowness is no place to dawdle, not unless you fancy queuing for a box of Squirrel Nutkin fudge. We are rufty-tufty bikers and scorn such fripperies; instead we make for the town’s jaunty pleasure-boat pier, wheel our steeds aboard ye olde imitation steam cruiser, and glide off across Windermere (015394 43360, www.windermere-lakecruises.co.uk ).

This is a lovely way to see the lake, its blunt fells swaddled in russet and yellow woodland; and today we’re part of a veritable regatta of rowing boats and kayaks, sailboats and canoes – even canoes with sails on them. We alight at Lakeside, the southern tip of Windermere, and heft ourselves gingerly over the crossbar for today’s 13-mile spin to Cartmel. The gel in my saddle appears to have turned to sandpaper. 12.30pm: despite the bum burn, we make it to Cartmel in double-quick time – softer country today. The town is packed with treats, its dapper market square buttressed by gift boutiques and galleries.

The village shop says a lot about the place, stocking not just “the original and genuine Cartmel sticky-toffee pudding”, but also pasta from Puglia, self-service olives and homemade Basque chicken ready-meals. We take a turn around Cartmel Priory, with its swivelled clock tower and misericords of ample-chested matrons and murderous imps, then head for the Kings Arms (015395 36220), which has all the three essential Fs for an archetypal hostelry: flagstones, fires and foaming ales.

3.15pm: wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! Not sure how we earned this, but the hill down to Haverthwaite is a humdinger – a no-brakes, feet-splayed-sideways job. We holler like idiots all the way into the village, where we find an old gunpowder works that once supplied the gold mines of Africa, and buy sneaky tickets for the 20-minute steam-train ride back to Lakeside (015395 31594, www.lakesiderailway.co.uk ), a legitimate short cut for sightseeing purposes . . .

7.30pm: good old Guy. Our guardian angel has not only booked us a lake-view room at the Lakeside Hotel (015395 30001, www.lakesidehotel.co.uk ) tonight, but a massage in its spangly new spa. Then dinner in the Lakeside restaurant, which includes an era-defining plate of lavender crème caramel with honey ice cream. Do we really have to get back on the bikes tomorrow?

DAY 3 Lakeside to Bowness

9.30am: Today’s itinerary was supposed to involve a 23-mile cycle along the western shore of Windermere to Hawkshead, with a hop round Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s former home, en route. But the godawful weather has made up our minds. Like naughty Nutkins, we’re cheating – riding the cruiser back to Bowness. Not that we haven’t loved our cycling adventure, and not that we don’t feel breezy and smiley and slightly intrepid for completing even two-thirds of it. It’s just that today is Sunday, and we fancy finishing our weekend with a nice, flattish, blueish bit of the Lakes.

Travel details: a two-night break with Country Lanes (015394 44544, www.countrylanes.co.uk ), with bike hire, route maps and half-board at the Fayrer Garden, starts from £295pp. B&B options available: two nights from £150pp.

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