Blimey.
Manchester's weather was proper, wrath of god biblical as I rode home.
Took shelter in the car wash place to avoid one, and broke the journey periodically when the rain got too heavy. At one such stop, under the canopy at John Lewis', the rain came down heavily enough to set off car alarms in the car park. Drains couldn't cope with the downpour, so the bottoms of most hills were, effectively, essentially fords. Rode one (before the motorway bridge just outside Cheadle) but didn't like the idea of the water being over my bottom bracket, so walked the next with the bike held up - even at the furthest point away from the road centre on the footpath, my ankles were under water.
Riding up to my usual route (right turn up Schools' Hill) the road was deep enough that a Range Rover coming through on the other side had bumper high water. Turned off with some other cyclists towards Kingsway along NCN 558, which had less standing water on it.
Capping it all off was a road closure in Wilmslow, which meant queueing traffic back to my turning - I got fed up of it (not really safe to filter there) and walked most of the way, easily outpacing the traffic. Arrived at Wilmslow station just as the train I was aiming for left, and as bright sunshine appeared. When I got off at Crewe, I managed to ride two dry minutes and then it rained again (not as heavy though).
I'm now desperately trying to get my stuff dry for tomorrow.
all day, with a northerly wind and BIG tides.
