One advantage of not having children and having a husband who is also a keen cyclist is that today was only ever going to have one outcome: a bike ride.
So having started the day with a surprise. We bought each other some exposure joystick lights (one each because they were needed & cheaper than the piggy back battery) my OH having told me we were not wrapping them up handed me the exposure box this morning. Humouring him, I weighed the 2 boxes and handed back the heavier one to him... I have needed my 2nd light this last 2 weeks and knew mine was on charge downstairs. He handed me back the heavier exposure box. I opened it to humour him, promptly closed it again and swore at him. Inside was a new camera! Yep he got me good and proper with that switch... (so today's pictures are on the new camera). Sometime back in October, I think it was, he asked me if there was anything I wanted for Christmas.... The only thing I could come up with was swapping out my Canon Powershot G12 with a Canon Powershot G15... but I had told him it was way too expensive given we live off 1 income nowadays and the car had recently broken down and cost £££. Bless him.
So up and out to get a 40 miler bike ride in. Only I adapted an existing ride, not really looking where the route re-routed to other than I knew there was a section along the A50 into Knutsford and I was convinced that at some point we would do the cycle route below Northwich as well... (I was working on Christmas day being quietish on the roads). It started off very icy and stayed that way pretty much until lunchtime. Ice on our landlady's car always means icy roads around here, so it was a take it easy and let my aching legs continue to ache... Early on and almost 100% of people either wished us Merry Christmas or said Hello, ironically the only person that didn't was another cyclist on a road bike...
. After a short spell on the A49 where all but one motorist was great with their overtaking, we baled down the country lanes and found lots and lots of ice... There was actually that much ice it was coming back around on the tyres and instead of that mud/sand strip you sometimes get, I had an ice strip instead! Thankfully both of us are used to riding in icy conditions so this was not too much of an issue for us.
We decided to stop off at Louis Carroll's birthplace and actually go in - something we have not done before so today's photos are of there but don't really show the really wonderful sunshine we were in at the time. Northwards was blue skies, but back southwestwards was grey skies and they were coming our way.
Lewis Carroll's birthplace.
The grid over the well.
From there we continued until we came to a police road closed sign. A quick chat with the police officer manning the closure revealed that the road was closed after the 4th accident in the same spot! Ice was the cause, though not the culprit! We promised to be very careful and were allowed to continue at our own risk. Ironically the ice that had caused the road closure was less of an issue than the ice we had already cycled through earlier on some of the minor country lanes. And sure enough, we found 3 of the 4 accidents in the same place - we think that the 4th happened earliest and was in exactly the same location as 2 of the others, hence very little sign of the 4th. We took it carefully but had no issues.
Lunch same at a motorway services, I kid not. Toilets (open) and table & chairs made for a nice change to sitting on the ground, jam sandwiches and peppermint tea being our Christmas Day lunch. Needless to say we got a lot of strange looks from a steady stream of people hoping something might be open... There was a chance that McDonalds may have been open, but I refused that option! From the services it was into no-mans land - aka Lyme which was seriously busy and I have to say whilst the overtaking manoeuvres were great from a cyclists point of view, I have to say several of the oncoming motorists had our sympathies... We were very glad to turn off that road and eventually found ourselves on the A50 which was totally quiet! Home was through a myriad of backlanes and became something of a magical mystery tour - in other words we thought we knew where we were, we recognised the roads, but Garmin had other ideas often turning us off right when we were expecting left and similar such detours!
We did finally make it home, to be greeted by Dusty again. He had been out this morning, but knew that the bikes being out meant no walk, so left us alone... but we were now back so he could say hello... and then off inside for a Christmas treat - a pig's ear - his favourite!
We made it home just as it started to drizzle. Mission accomplished and Christmas Day mostly avoided and lunch certainly avoided
http://www.strava.com/activities/101844103
35 miles for me this morning. Took my cyclocross bike out so it was a mixture of on road and some trails.
