With Stewart in Northern Ireland for the day for his father-in-law's funeral - David brought Charles down from Scotland so that I wasn't cycling alone for the day! Having bashed out 40 extra miles the night before, it should have been an easy straightforward day, only 60 or so miles, with no major ascents to face - the map looked good.
It was a brute of a day in fact!
It started off well, Charles is a very strong cyclist, and we made excellent progress through the lanes of Cheshire, with Lancashire and the North in our sights. The GPX files we'd been using to navigate had been great all the way from Cornwall, but were severley out of date after Winsford where they led us into an impassable woodland - parallel to a new cycle track!
With our average speed on Strava looking incredible (and not in a good way), we trudged on. The next issues we faced were miles of canal towpaths. These can be great when the surface is decent, they are flat and often cut through major cities without using huge roads, junctions etc and are safe from traffic - and can be fast.
Some of them became gravel paths, not suitable for road bikes - and some slowed us again to walking pace. The vibration was so extreme that Charles' head unit on his bike completely sheared off its mountings - and our hands were shattered.
But worse was to come as we followed the cycle route North between Manchester and Liverpool.
In some accursed spot near Wigan the cycle route picked up and old railway line. Now, in Devon and Cornwall these had been amazing rides, fast, smooth and direct. This one was almost impassable - not even suitable for gravel bikes, it was really a mountain bike track through cuttings which were boggy and full of rocks. It should not have been part of the national cycle network!! It was a horror show - we ended up walking a long way, again with many miles yet to cycle.
It was something of a godsend that I had managed to the extra 40miles the previous night, or we woudl have been in real trouble! However, tired, bruised and feeling very road-weary we staggered into Bamber Bridge and were very relieved to see my wife, and the van at Bamber Bridge - in the football club car park.
She drive us to the digs for the night and dropped us off. After some food we both crashed out, but she then drove to Manchester Airport to get Stewart. He'd flown out of Birmingham and back into Manchester, so only missed one leg of the LEJOG - which we will go back and cycle (but not that evil railway cutting!!).
No comments:
Post a Comment