FNRttC Hexham.

[Andrew Br]

Related to the Manchester-Blackpool FNRttC post, does anyone local to Hexham know if the Euro Garage at the services next to the A69 lets people in to use the facilities and get a coffee and sandwich early (03.00) in the morning ?

Reason for asking is that I'm planning to run a Carlisle-Newcastle FNRttC (see here:- https://www.fnrttc.org.uk/manchester-to-blackpool-3-june) using the route that mcshroom came up with a few years ago.
The Tesco is no longer 24 hour so I need a venue for refreshments and it really needs to be indoors. If it is open I'm hoping we can sit down in one of the (closed) franchises having bought drinks etc from the shop.
We did this in Blackburn last year on the Manchester-Blackpool FNRttC and it was, IMO, better than the McDonalds that we'd previously used. It is also part of the Euro Garages network.

TIA.

 

[annedonnelly]

No idea but these people - Cycling Minds - might be able to help. They've just opened a cycling hub in Hexham and propably know there way around that part of the world.

 

[Andrew Br]

Thanks for the suggestion annedonnelly.
A correspondent on yACF went into the garage today and asked them; we can go into the shop to use the facilities and we can also sit down at the tables while we eat and drink .

 

[CharlieB]

A shameless plug for this outing... ...thoroughly recommended.
I did the @mcshroom version several years ago and it's a cracker, not to be missed.
Trains and hotels for this are booked for me - fingers firmly x'ed it happens - if it doesn't - I'll do it as a day C2C.

 

[Andrew Br]

Please hold off booking tickets for this folks; I haven't yet managed to do a day-time on bike* route check for this ride. My attempts in the past few months have been stymied by Trans Pennine's Sunday strikes and now I'm concentrating on the Friday's Edinburgh-London tour. I plan to get back to it in July but there are more rail strikes planned.
I really want this ride to go ahead (the route is amazing) but if I can't do a "proper" route check I won't lead it. Safety first.

*I drove as much of it as I could before Xmas (cars aren't allowed on some parts of the route) and I rode west from Newcastle in appalling weather later on the same evening. It doesn't count as a "route checK"