Tuesday 23rd May
The last time I completed this journey it was about 10 -15 degrees cooler and my fingers never really thawed out until I was in Liverpool. Today it’s much more pleasant, with a light breeze with sunny intervals.
I’m repeating the trip to the Trafford Hall youth hostel near Chester simply because I enjoyed it so much last time. The route is slightly different and gave me a different perspective of the Wirral. Last time I stuck to the East coast, and previously I’ve cycled the West coast, so today I went down the middle.
I also took advantage of the wonderful Liverpool Loop Line, part of the Trans Pennine Trail to miss out much of the suburbs. It wasn’t on the direct route, heading as it does NW/SE, but I didn’t mind the diversion. I even got to cycle beside the Aintree turf, albeit behind a large fence.
At anything other than commuter times, the Mersey ferry sails up and down the river as part of a river cruise rather than directly across, but that wasn’t a problem – I quite enjoyed the commentary.
It seems to be my lot to find myself on flooded cycle paths this year. I found another one in Wallasey, but managed to skirt around it, only to find myself on the wrong side of a river. A short diversion later and I’m back on track enjoying the numerous cycleways and quiet road that Wirral can offer.
After checking in at the hostel (and availing myself of the special offer of a ‘brew and a cake’, I then dropped the bags off and nipped into Chester. It was only 25 minutes away along the splendid Millennium Greenway cycle route. It was full of commuters at that time of night which was great to see.
I’m now enjoying a pre-prandial drink before ordering food. The hostel has a coach-full of children in tonight, so the dining room is not available. Thankfully, there is an alternative in what they call the Ballroom! It is rather a splendid setting.
For the journey home tomorrow I’ll be taking another new route, crossing the Mersey and Ship Canal at Warburton near Lymm.
Interlude
When I was young my only technology was a wind-up watch (or a ‘watch’ as we called it). If I wound it up each morning, it worked and needed no further attention. These days, when I cycle anywhere I have to carry with me a charger which has five USB ports which all get used. My phone takes one, Garmin GPS another, the bar camera for the third whilst the last two slots are occupied by front and rear lights.
The charger is quite old, and for some reason, it whistles when things are charging. It’s not like someone’s whistling ‘Sitting on the Dock of the Bay’, but more like a very high pitched whine which fluctuates in tone and pitch, reminiscent of the sound an old internet dialler used to make. Anyway, this noise annoys me, and I’m sure that it annoys others around me, so last night, before everything was charged, and as people were going to bed, I turned it off. In the middle of the night I awoke and everything was very quiet, the other dorm occupants were fast asleep, so I thought I’d turn on the charger again – no-one would hear the whistle when they were asleep.
I plugged it in, and then several things happened at once. The phone chirruped and the screen lit up, the GPS made a noise and the camera made two very loud beeps before turning on the video with an even louder beep! While this was going on, the front light came on full beam with its 600 lumens intensity and a button on the rear light began to flash intermittently. This is all at about 2am you realise.
In my confusion, I couldn’t decide which bit to turn off first (I also was being assaulted by sound and light) so after a few seconds that felt like minutes, I unplugged everything, thus reversing the whole sequence. The noisy things all beeped to inform me that they’d lost mains power, but the back light for some reason continued to flash for quite a while afterwards. Of course, everyone was awake by this time: the gentle breathing was replaced with tossing and turning. But being English, no-one said a word about it this morning! Oh, for the simplicity of a wind-up watch!
Lovely day again this morning, so I’m looking forward to cycling back home. Into the wind, unfortunately.
Wednesday 24th May
This morning it was an enjoyable but uneventful journey East and then North to cross the Manchester Ship Canal at Warburton near Lymm. The great thing about touring is that I randomly come across pretty villages that I have otherwise no cause to visit. Today, it was the village of Great Budworth which has everything you’d want in a village: a church, a pub, handsome houses and even a set of stocks for two people. It seemed to be short of a green, but perhaps I missed that.
The toll bridge over the canal was 12p per trip. Or an all-day pass for 25p. Whilst it was very reasonable, I didn’t pay it since bikes were free. Winner!
My coffee-and-scone stop was at Glazebrook at a café called The Greenery Coffee and Flowers. It was lovely sitting in the sun watching the world go by, but in view of the café’s name I was quite surprised to see artificial boxwood plants on the tables. They kept blowing away too, but that kept me amused replacing them.
From then, the route took me Northwards into the wind and also into the hills which so far had been noticeably lacking. The scenery became more familiar but less photogenic along the East Lancs road, the Roe Green Loopline and on into Bolton town centre. After Horwich, it became prettier again through Rivington, but that’s virtually home for me so I didn’t appreciate as much as I ought.
A very successful trip covering 146 miles and collecting several new Veloviewer tiles.