I had planned to ride out to the Forest of Bowland yesterday as part of a metric century.
If I cycle there and back a big chunk of the total distance is taken up by that, leaving less time on the nicer FoB roads.
My more appealing plan had been to ride there but finish off riding over the hill to Blackburn and catching a train home from there.
I discovered before setting off though that there was an overtime ban affecting Northern rail travel. Most of the trains would 'probably' be running but I didn't want to risk ending up at Blackburn station and finding out that either no trains were running to Todmorden, or that I would have to wait hours for one. That particular ride was therefore postponed...
I decided to do a local 50 instead. 54 km in fact - Tod, Walsden, Calderbook, Caldermoor, Littleborough, the A58 up to Blackstone Edge, my anticlockwise loop through Hubberton Green, then back down to Littleborough and directly back on the A6033.
There were some nice sunny spells, but the recent chilly wind was still blowing. I felt quite tired when I got home so I was glad that I had only done half the originally planned distance. Nearly the same amount of climbing though - 900 m/nearly 3,000 ft.
)
