Wednesday 3rd October, A bit of exercise

I’ve been back from my Via de la Plata trip for a few days now. Since returning home nearly all my time has been spent catching up with various administration duties and being a carer. Whenever I go on a trip I need to ensure that I have care-cover in place for the the family members I’m responsible for. This certainly makes me appreciate my trips away.

I’m off out for a run this Saturday and feel terribly unfit – even though I’ve just walked around 200km in Spain. I tend to work by the axiom: Train for walking by walking, for cycling by cycling, for running by running, and so on.

For those not in the know, the term ‘running’ is very much a generalisation. There’s a huge difference between road running (on the flat, on a hard and solid surface) and cross-country-running – where you can be running on (and through!) virtually any surface imaginable.

It’s cross-country running wot I do. Not very well, and certainly not very quickly….but it’s fun and I enjoy it immensely.

From time-to-time I run with the Cheshire Hash House Harriers (A drinking club with a running problem) but mainly with the very splendid Cheshire Tally-Ho! Hare & Hounds running club. Whilst the Hash run throughout the year, the Tally-Ho! season runs from September until April. Tally-Ho! is a fascinating club with a well documented history going back to the club’s birth in 1872. The club is the second oldest running club in the country, beaten only by Thames Hare & Hounds.There are suspicions that some of the founder members are still running with the club. There aren’t many (any?) young members. 

Tally-Ho! What a fine bunch of, er, athletes. Ahem.

Tally-Ho! usually run around 8 – 10 miles, following a sawdust trail left by the trail-layers. Well what else would you call them, eh? Only the trail-layers (the hares) know the route in advance, it’s up to the runners (the hounds) to keep their eyes open when following the route. This often results in some interesting and varied routes taken by the hounds!

A typical Tally-Ho! route.

Both these clubs are non-competitive. This suits me perfectly. I don’t race. I’ve run various marathons, half-marathons, 10k etc, but I’ve always tended to use a race as a motivator to get / keep fit. Mountain Marathons (KIMMs, OMMs, Saunders etc) are a bit different, ‘going steadily in the right direction’ is the key to a reasonable result. Having said that, there always seem to be 95% of the field who are better than me going steadily…etc. Oh well.

Anyway, back to the exercise thing.

Saturday’s Tally-Ho! run will be around 8-9 miles in the Peak District…..but I haven’t run that sort of distance for a while, and certainly not over hilly ground.

I went for a gently undulating 6 mile run this morning. This went well. Nothing dropped off and it didn’t hurt. Not bad for a man with knackered knees. This afternoon, as part of my caring responsibilities I had to visit my father. I decided to cycle over to see him. It’s not far, a 12-13 mile round trip, but it’s gentle and low impact exercise. Tomorrow I’ll repeat the run, probably extending it by a couple of miles.

As autumn closes in it’s lovely to see the hedgerows filling with berries. Theories abound on the subject of the volume of berries produced. Does a large crop of berries mean we’re going to have a cold winter? Or does it mean the summer’s been very wet? I don’t know, but the berries look nice!

          

I suppose I’d best get on writing up my Via de la Plata trip, it won’t write itself.

A Bikepack to Chester, Day 2

Thursday 2nd August, to Chester

I had taken heed of Alan’s blogpost singing the praises of Karrimor’s new sleeping mat and ordered one from Sports Direct. The mat arrived in the post the day after ordering online, along with a not-very-light free gift of a half-litre mug:

The free mug alongside a pint beer-glass to give a better idea of it’s size.

I took the mat on this trip, a one-night trip was ideal for a quick kit test. I found the mat to be very comfortable and I agree with Alan’s view that it wouldn’t be suitable for cold-weather camping, there’s very little thermal insulation. Although I certainly wasn’t cold, even on that summer evening I was aware of the cold ground underneath. I used my excellent Alpkit Pipedream 400 sleeping bag for trip, overkill considering the warm weather, but it was the lightest I had without going stupidly light.

All in all the Karrimor mat is comfortable, very lightweight, packs away to not a lot….and is cheap. With the addition of a small length of closed-cell foam mat positioned under your torso it would be good for cold weather trips. It’s a large mat that took some inflating, if it was mummy-shaped it would need less air to inflate it – but I’m being picky here. I’m very happy with the mat, especially considering the price, under £30.

Thanks to Alan, I wouldn’t have bought one without his heads-up.  

Anyway, back to the bike ride….

Leaving Delamere by good forestry tracks and very quiet lanes, including the the accurately descriptive Corkscrew Lane, we headed south in glorious sunshine.

Through Kelsall and Clotton, our next target was the Shropshire Union Canal. The cycling was easy over almost completely flat countryside. It’s amazing how much more you notice when cycling slowly. You see things differently to a walker, and certainly a motorist.

 Stripey caterpillar

The Shropshire Union towpath around the delightfully named Brassey Green was very bumpy even though the map suggested a good track.

The surface was grassy, but that grass hid all manner of stones, bricks, muddy bits etc. It clearly wasn’t used much by cyclists or pedestrians, although we met a cyclist travelling to Wolverhampton from Ellesmere Port by towpath. He was on a serious mountain bike with decent tyres but was finding it slow, tough going. On his recommendation we took to tarmac at the first opportunity. 3 miles of country lanes running parallel to the canal took us into Waverton and back onto the towpath – now a very well surfaced track.

No more photographs I’m afraid. This is a pity, because as we arrived back on the canal I spotted a beautiful 1975 Honda CB500-4 in original condition. The chap who owned it had bought it in cardboard boxes and he’d taken months to put it back together.

Note to self: Take more photographs!

The last few miles into Chester was very popular with walkers, runners and cyclists. Beautiful gardens backed onto the canal, this was quite an affluent part of the city. As we got closer to the centre we came across lunch-time pedestrians, taking a breath of fresh air from their places of work.

We arrived at Chester railway station in good time to catch the 13:07 back to Timperley. Bikes travelled free which was A Good Thing. Although the official limit is two bicycles per carriage there was no problem with more….another Good Thing!

Our bikes were really very muddy. Jon, being an organised sort of chap, had brought a J-cloth to wipe the worst of the mud off his bike. Back at JJ Towers, my pressure cleaner had to be brought into play to shift the caked-on mud from our bikes.

The trip was successful: we had enjoyed ourselves and we had proved that towpath bike-packing was a goer.

Vital statistics:

29km with 150m of up. Easy-peasy.

A Bikepack to Chester, Day 1

Wednesday 1st August, to Delamere Forest

A quick pose for the paparazzi on the TransPennine Trail at Lymm.

I’ve not bikepacked for years so I felt a short trip would be a good plan for a shake-down – particularly as a bikepacking trip around the Cheshire Ring is coming up in the near future.

Jon, always happy to oblige, readily agreed to join me on this trip. We had originally planned to set out on this trip on the previous day, but a poor weather forecast convinced us to delay our departure by a day.

Jon arrived at JJ Towers soon after 9.30am, and after coffee and other tactics failed to further delay our departure, we set off.

The idea had been to get on to the towpath of the Bridgewater Canal in Timperley and to cycle out to Warrington. The wet summer had succeeded in turning that section of towpath into a quagmire – too much for our hybrid tyres to cope with. Our FWA, The TransPennine Trail was a most suitable alternative.

Image taken from http://www.seftoncoast.org.uk/

Jon was riding his new Decathlon hybrid bike. He’d had some teething problems with bike, but Decathlon in Stockport had proved helpful. Unfortunately a replacement rear wheel had been needed but as the new one was of a rather higher quality than the original, he wasn’t complaining.

I was riding Diana, my Dawes hybrid. It’s a solid bike with a large frame which suits me. I replaced the original wheels which has improved the bike. Shod with Schwalbe Marathons, I feel quite confident cycling over surfaces that might lead to punctures in ordinary tyres.

Both bikes were fitted with panniers stuffed with our kit.

We trundled westwards at a very leisurely pace – we weren’t racing and had nothing to prove. We were on our holidays!

The Trail leaves the old railway line in Warrington, taking to the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal which still boasts relics of the area’s industrial past.

Steel lattice road bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal 

 

Looking East from the swing-bridge at Stockton Heath….

 

….and looking West

We left the Transpennine Trail in Warrington, and after about a km of tarmac we arrived at the Bridgewater Canal. The surface of the towpath was really quite good and we enjoyed tootling along in the sunshine until we could no longer ignore our rumbling tums. A halt was called at a pleasant stop by a road bridge. Butties were demolished and Jon fired up his meths stove to make a cuppa. Ducks and their little ducklets quacked around, hoping we’d take pity on them and chuck them some crumbs. We didn’t – although plenty of other folks had brought (I assume) stale loaves to feed the ducks.

Lunch

A little later we felt an ice-cream stop coming on. After all, the sun was shining and it would have been rude not to celebrate the fact. The village shop at Moore provided the necessary whilst a comfortable bench seat on the towpath provided comfort for our nether regions.

The canal now headed south, past Daresbury and under the M56 at Preston Brook where we changed to the Trent & Mersey Canal.

The towpath surface was very good, making for easy cycling. all manner of boats were moored along the canal, most were pleasure craft whilst some were clearly working boats.

At Preston Brook the Trent & Mersey Canal enters a tunnel, at 1272 yards, one of the longest in the country. The canal is only wide enough for travel in one direction so a simple timetable arrangement is in operation, everyone takes their turn:

The ‘towpath’ is routed over the top of the tunnel – it was just about here that it started to rain. We sheltered under overhanging trees for the best part of an hour before sunshine returned and we continued our ride. 

As we cycled on, the canal below us, we spotted some odd-looking buildings. Some were air-vents for the tunnel, it wasn’t obvious what others were for.

 

Dutton, the South end of the tunnel

The well-surfaced towpath had a personality change after Dutton. The tarmac had been replaced by slippy, slurpy, slidy gloop:

Hybrid bike tyres are certainly better than road tyres on surfaces like this – knobblies would have been preferable. From time-to-time we had to get off and push the bikes, pedalling just didn’t work.

  Location clarification

I don’t know how old these signs are, I would imagine they date back to the days of working canals.

Wooden-hulled narrow boats close to Acton Bridge

Acton Bridge, just visible in the distance 

We left the grassy towpath close to Acton Bridge and crossed the swing-bridge over the River Weaver. We were undecided whether to attempt a wild camp in the forest, or to wimp out and use the Camping & Caravan Club site….complete with showers. A beer stop was called at the Tigers Head, Norley. After lengthy discussions lasting all of 2-3 minutes, we chose the proper campsite. It was the showers that swung it.

 Rehydration stop

We were only a couple of miles from the campsite so we could quite easily have spent (much) longer at the pub, but we were getting hungry.

A short stretch of tarmac soon delivered us to the edge of the forest. Good forest tracks made for easy cycling. At around 7pm we rolled into the campsite. Camping & Caravan Club sites have a policy of never turning away cyclists or backpackers so we were quite confident of getting on.

Tents up, brews made and tea on the go, it had been an excellent and very laid-back day’s cycling in good company.

The day’s vital statistics:

45km with 350m of uppery.

The first bit of today’s ride 

The second bit of today’s ride

(Click these images to enlarge)

More tomorrow!

Saturday 30th June, Breakfast with Marmalade

Lymm Festival 2012 is underway as I type

This local village event attracts performers and audience from near and far. Timperley in my case. Every year local organisations put huge amounts of effort to help make this gala the success it has grown into today. One of these organisations is Lymm Folk Club run by the very fine Bernard (available for weddings, christenings, bar mitzvahs, funerals, divorce parties etc). Bernard arranges for all manner of events to take place during the festival, including a ceilidh, very many folk concerts, and of course Breakfast with Marmalade.
The Marmaladies, previously featured in the pages of this blog, run a singaround / music session for a couple of hours during festival, entitled ‘Breakfast with Marmalade’. Click here for a better photograph than mine of the Marmaladies in action at Lymm Festival 2009.
Honorary Marmaladies are called on for the occasions when more noise is required, and today I was one of those called to assist.  
Enough of this…on with the day!
The weather was good so I decided to ride Diana (my Dawes hybrid….well what else would you call a Dawes??) to Lymm. Apart from the first mile I followed quiet lanes for the 8.5 mile ride into Lymm, and in particular the Spread Eagle (JW Lees) – the venue for today’s musical bash. The ride took around 40 minutes – it probably took longer to load and unload the bike at each end of the journey.

The Spread Eagle…before the Great Rains

On entering a sunny Lymm village I spotted a most strange looking bicycle. I can’t imagine what it’s like to ride:

The performance was due to start at 12 0’clock, and at about 12.06 prompt the music and singing began. The audience steadily grew until at one point there were so many people trying to ignore us that their numbers could be counted on the fingers of not too many hands.
Seriously though, it was good. The beer garden of the Spread Eagle filled up with festival goers as well as passers-by who just happened to be, er, passing by. Brief rain-showers did their best to interrupt the proceedings but we were there to have fun – a little bit of rain wasn’t going to bother us!

 The performance area..and what a performance.

I was delighted when Lynsey rolled up with the not-so-baby Isabel. They were looking for some entertainment but were sadly disappointed when they realised that they’d be listening to me.

Isabel does lunch….she refused to eat that green egg though 

L – R, Our Bernard with his iron lung, Mike, Clur, Lynsey & Isabel, Alan on geetar 

Rob, singin’ in the rain 

During the lunchtime’s ‘entertainment’ 3 cyclists joined us in the beer garden. These fellas clearly meant business – they ate a huge lunch, loading carbs like there was no tomorrow. They were cycling JogLe – John O’Groats to Lands End. Their original plan was to take 11 days to do the journey, but bad weather conditions had slowed them down so they re-scheduled to take 12 days – that’s still around 100 miles a day. Their next planned stop was the Ellesmere / Overton area of Shropshire where they were intending to camp.

The JogLers with their solo support crew – the father of one of the cyclists.   

I wished them luck as they left, my little commute back home to Timperley was suddenly completely insignificant.
The music and singing finished just after 2pm. Our audience and other singers & musicians either went on to the next festival event – or like me, they went home. I loaded Diana and made for the Bridgewater Canal towpath. Before I could get there the sky darkened, there was a flash, a rumble – and the heavens opened. Big time. Fortunately I’d spotted friend Sue in the village and we stopped to catch up with any gossip and / or scandal – there wasn’t anything worth reporting. The good news was that we’d chosen the stand under a shop awning (yes, Lymm has REAL shops!) which offered shelter from the downpour.
The road became two fast-flowing streams separated by a narrow strip of tarmac. I was so glad to have spotted Sue! Half an hour later the rain eased and I was able to continue my homeward journey. The canal towpath had been re-surfaced in parts so the first part of my bike ride home was fairly clean….then it became muddy. Very muddy indeed.

The resurfaced and not-muddy section of the Bridgewater Canal towpath

Trying hard to avoid the worst of the cruddy mud and puddles I battled on, soon catching up with 5 girls loaded with heavy rucksacks. ‘DofE? I enquired. ‘Yes’ – they had a fairly simple route of Transpennine Trail (disused but resurfaced railway line), some field footpaths, and canal towpath. They were doing well and were pleased to hear that they hadn’t too far to go to their campsite, the Home Farm / Dunham Park Scout campsite.
I left them to carry on their expedition, whilst I carried on Eastwards (now where have I heard that before?) to get muddier. Leaving the towpath to get onto tarmac at Broadheath was a Joyous Thing. No more mud. 10-15 minutes later I was home.
I’m not sure if I was muddier than the bike. Whatever – it was a close-run thing. Buckets of water had the bike looking better than it had for months. A hot soapy shower had me not looking much different, just with less mud.
Another good, if slightly damp day. I really should get out cycling more.

Vital statistics: 16.5 miles with around 250’ of upness:

Bikepacking the Cheshire Ring, A Plan

The Cheshire Ring is a 97 mile route on the canals (and towpaths) of north Cheshire. What's convenient for me is that the Bridgewater Canal runs through Timperley - 1/2 mile from JJ Towers. I've walked sections of the ring over the years but now fancy a leisurely 2 day bikepacking trip around the full route.

Minimal kit will be needed, it will only be an overnight trip - so just tent, sleeping bag etc, brew kit and so on. Food will be readily available en-route - there are pubs and shops a-plenty.

I'll probably travel clockwise, to get city-center Manchester out of the way. Not too sure where to camp yet, but probably around Congleton - it's close enough to half-way round and I know there are spots where I'll be able to hide the Akto...perhaps near a pub.

I'll likely use my Dawes Hybrid for the trip, it's comfortable and quite bombproof.

All I need now is a window of half decent weather - hopefully preceded by some dryness so the towpath has chance to dry out.