Well, it was a good day out on the bikes. It's a pity that more of you couldn't have joined us!
I met
@Littgull and
@nickAKA in Dalton St car park in Todmorden at 08:30 and we set off along the A646, continuing on that until Rose Grove, between Burnley and Padiham. We showed Nick the Padiham Greenway from Rose Grove to Padiham and the Old Roman Rd route from Padiham to Spring Wood. Maybe he will use those in future to get him to the
Ribble Valley?
We continued from Whalley to Great Mitton, where Nick had to turn for home - too many family commitments to spend the rest of the day meandering about with Littgull and me. We told him that he was leaving just as we were getting to the best parts of the route, but that's life, isn't it!
Before he left Nick took a selfie of us gathered in front of the medieval church at Mitton. I'm sure he will be along to post that at some point.
@Blue Hills told me some time ago that the church has a 'twinned toilet', which was something I had never heard of. If you have £60 to spare for a good cause, visit
the charity's website. And for those of you, like BH, who are interested in old churches - take a look at
this article.
Brian and I continued on our way at a leisurely pace. We could ride a bit faster than we do but the weather was nice, the scenery was glorious, and we had long hours of daylight so we weren't in a hurry.
The Trough of Bowland was looking lovely. I took a quick snap when we stopped for Brain to have a snack at the roadside ....
As you can see, at that time we had scattered clouds and patches of blue sky. We were encountering a strengthening headwind which was a bit chilly as it was coming from a northerly direction, but when the sun was shining it was very pleasant.
We must be getting fitter - the climb of the Trough of Bowland is quite hard work from the south side (about 15% in places) but we were still nattering away for most of it!
A quick descent followed and then a long steady climb to Jubilee Tower. As we ascended the skies started to darken. There are panoramic views from the tower and we could see that rain was falling to the east but the sun was shining over Lancaster. We were going to head towards the coast so if we had continued immediately we might have avoided the rain but we decided to stop for another snack and to take some photos at the tower. Here's one of me standing there with my bike ...
By the time got moving again light rain was falling. It wasn't sufficiently bad that I felt the need to stop and put my 'boil-in-the-bag' light rain jacket on, but it made the road surface look a bit slippery for our descent and the windchill and damp made for a cold 15 minutes or so, but then we rode back into sunshine again and it stayed like that from then on. We were lucky - a friend tells me that our starting point in the Calder Valley experienced a heavy rain/hail storm at about that time!
We had a relaxed break at the cafe in Conder Green before turning and heading for home. We were now getting the promised tailwind helping us along so it made the return ride easier than I can recall from previous such rides, but Littgull was starting to get worrying twinges from one hamstring. He played safe and rode slowly on any steep ramps we encountered, but he still got up them on the bike rather than having to walk.
We had another short break at Sainsburys in Longridge (toilets/snacks) and then continued along the Fell, before descending to Ribchester Bridge and returning to Whalley via Old Langho and Billington.
Then it was the reverse of the outward route - Old Roman Rd, Padiham, Greenway to Rose Grove. Brian had put extra distance in at the start of the ride so he could have the luxury of catching the train home from Rose Grove but still get his imperial century in for the day, so I said goodbye to him at the station and continued solo. I stopped on the way back and phoned an order through to my local takeaway. I was getting very tired by then and didn't want to think about preparing food myself!
I have lost 2 long blocks of riding this year so far due to heavy colds and I could feel the lack of fitness towards the end of the ride. It was a very slow one, but we did tackle a surprising amount of climbing - I clocked the stats at 161 km/2,250 m of ascent (100 miles/7,400 ft).
I slept well last night!
