ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
@Littgull and I were chatting on the recent Season of Mists audax event about doing one last forum ride together before the year is out, and this is it! (If the early winter weather turns out to be benign then there may be another such ride in December, but don't count on it! 
)
Anyway ... we have decided on Saturday, 5th November for the ride, with the following day in reserve in case of awful weather on the 5th.
The ride will be much less hilly than most of mine and the route features more main roads than usual, but we will take the available opportunities to reduce the A-road mileage, while still avoiding big hills.
Here is the elevation profile:
Meet at the free Dalton St car park in Todmorden at 08:50 on Saturday, 5th November, 2016. We will aim to leave at 09:00. The car park should have plenty of space at that time on a Saturday morning, but if not it will be easy to find a place to park on one of the nearby backstreets - most of them have no parking restrictions. NB I have just noticed that there is a 2.2 metre height restriction barrier on the car park so if you are driving a vehicle taller than that, park on a road nearby.
The route is about 82 km/51 miles in length. We ride towards Burnley on the A646 and skirt its western fringes as far as Rose Grove. From there we take to the excellent Padiham Greenway, a much nicer way to Padiham than sticking to the main road. We do a couple of hundred metres back on the A646 before turning right and climbing up to a nice lane which takes us round to Spring Wood picnic centre above Whalley avoiding the busy A671 (which has a poor accident record). We drop down into Whalley and then climb gently up through Mitton and Bashall Eaves to Micklehurst, where we turn right and head to Waddington Fell Road on the quiet lane through Kitchens. A quick descent takes us to our stop at Country Kitchen cafe in Waddington. After the cafe, we will take a more direct route back to Whalley via Bashall Town, and then return on the roads we came out on in the morning. I have attached a GPX route file at the end of this post.
If you desperately want to get a metric century in then you could meet Littgull in Littleborough and ride to Todmorden with him in the morning and back with him at the end of the ride. That would give you about 101 km in total.
The clocks will have gone back by then so sunset will be at approximately 16:30. We are starting from Tod at 09:00 so we can ride at a steady pace, have a relaxed cafe stop, and still get back with plenty of daylight to spare.
I expect that we will be out for 5-6 hours including the cafe stop but we will go at the speed of the slowest rider and nobody will be left behind. Lights should not be needed but it might be sensible to bring them anyway in case conditions are very gloomy or you decide to add the extra distance on at the end to claim a metric century - if I am feeling energetic on the day, I might do that.
Provisional list of riders:
Paging @Starchivore, @Pale Rider, @SteCenturion ... and @AnybodyElseWhoFanciesIt!
Post below to express interest.
)Anyway ... we have decided on Saturday, 5th November for the ride, with the following day in reserve in case of awful weather on the 5th.
The ride will be much less hilly than most of mine and the route features more main roads than usual, but we will take the available opportunities to reduce the A-road mileage, while still avoiding big hills.
Here is the elevation profile:
Meet at the free Dalton St car park in Todmorden at 08:50 on Saturday, 5th November, 2016. We will aim to leave at 09:00. The car park should have plenty of space at that time on a Saturday morning, but if not it will be easy to find a place to park on one of the nearby backstreets - most of them have no parking restrictions. NB I have just noticed that there is a 2.2 metre height restriction barrier on the car park so if you are driving a vehicle taller than that, park on a road nearby.
The route is about 82 km/51 miles in length. We ride towards Burnley on the A646 and skirt its western fringes as far as Rose Grove. From there we take to the excellent Padiham Greenway, a much nicer way to Padiham than sticking to the main road. We do a couple of hundred metres back on the A646 before turning right and climbing up to a nice lane which takes us round to Spring Wood picnic centre above Whalley avoiding the busy A671 (which has a poor accident record). We drop down into Whalley and then climb gently up through Mitton and Bashall Eaves to Micklehurst, where we turn right and head to Waddington Fell Road on the quiet lane through Kitchens. A quick descent takes us to our stop at Country Kitchen cafe in Waddington. After the cafe, we will take a more direct route back to Whalley via Bashall Town, and then return on the roads we came out on in the morning. I have attached a GPX route file at the end of this post.
If you desperately want to get a metric century in then you could meet Littgull in Littleborough and ride to Todmorden with him in the morning and back with him at the end of the ride. That would give you about 101 km in total.
The clocks will have gone back by then so sunset will be at approximately 16:30. We are starting from Tod at 09:00 so we can ride at a steady pace, have a relaxed cafe stop, and still get back with plenty of daylight to spare.
I expect that we will be out for 5-6 hours including the cafe stop but we will go at the speed of the slowest rider and nobody will be left behind. Lights should not be needed but it might be sensible to bring them anyway in case conditions are very gloomy or you decide to add the extra distance on at the end to claim a metric century - if I am feeling energetic on the day, I might do that.
Provisional list of riders:
- ColinJ
- Bill (mate of ColinJ, non-CycleChat)
- Littgull
- Oldfentiger (subject to not being removed from spousal good books!)
Paging @Starchivore, @Pale Rider, @SteCenturion ... and @AnybodyElseWhoFanciesIt!
Post below to express interest.
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