LEJOG, Oh the wind and rain

 

It was definitely a good move to stay at Penzance YHA last night. This morning the roads were littered with bits of tree and other detritus. Aktos are very good but last night's storms would certainly have tested it's mettle.

At 10am the winds were still far too strong to cycle, forget about cycling safely. So strong were the gusts that it was difficult to stand at times.

I went with Plan B: bus to Lands End and walk back to Penzance. To avoid camera shake from the wind (did I mention the strong wind?) I took photographs with my camera set to 'Sports Mode' ie: a fast shutter speed.

At Lands End the sea was quite spectacular, waves were crashing like nobody's business. A light aircraft flew over, it seemed to be almost travelling sideways - I'm rather pleased that I wasn't on board.

There were a few people tottering around Lands End itself but nobody was following the SWCP, opting instead for the safer inland footpaths and roads.

I was keen to visit the Telegraph Museum at Porthcurno, I quite fancied a play with their radio station - although I hadn't thought to bring my Amateur Radio Licence with me.....doh.

Unfortunately the museum was closed, shut, and not open either. That was the end of that then.

Never mind, a pint in the pub opposite would be reasonable consolation... well it would have been had it been open. Ho hum.

The beach at Porthcurno was quite beautiful, bathed in sunshine but whipped by an icy gale....there's that wind again.

The rest of the walk back was unremarkable, mainly because I was following minor roads. I've walked the coastal path before and that would have been a far more attractive proposition - had it not been for the wind.

I arrived back in Penzance around mid afternoon (I'd forgotten how lumpy Cornwall was) and still blowing an ice-cold hoolie.

Plan B rev1.0: head to Wetherspoon's, drink coffee and eat cake (twurly for a beer, even for me) and review my position.

The review resulted in Plan B rev1.1: stay another night in Penzance and head off early in the morning. I'm behind schedule but it matters not - as long as I'm home in good time to play a ceilidh on 19th March.

So that's it, 10 miles covered and around 40 miles behind schedule - but plenty of opportunity to catch up.

There are some rather poor photographs included - apart from a close-up of Longships Lighthouse, a mile or so off Lands End. That photograph came from Geograph, via Wikipedia.

LEJOG, In the beginning....

At Navigation Road Station, Timperley

A long day involving a bit of cycling and lots of trains (4) saw my arrival in Penzance at 18.04 precisely.

This evening's Plan was to cycle to Lands End and stealth camp but the weather has worsened..... and it's going to get worsener still overnight, with 55-60mph winds and heavy rain forecast.

Quincyquontly I've booked into Penzance YHA for the night. The forecast isn't brilliant for tomorrow so Plan B is to go to Lands End by bus and walk back to the hostel, it's only around 10 miles so I should be back at the hostel by around 1pm. I'll jump back on the bike and pedal off into the East.

Being as wot the wind will be from the West, and that I'll be travelling East I should be able to get a good few miles in before tea-time.... I might be a bit soggy and damp though.

I was going to hit the local Wetherspoons but I'll try to support the YHA by drinking some of their beers. The YHA is a charity after all, and charities should be supported.

Thursday 9th April 2015, Baby on Board

I needed to cycle up to Chorlton’s Unicorn earlier this evening. It was a lovely evening, an ideal excuse to get the bike out for a ride up the canal towpath. There was a rather unusual and very interesting bicycle in the bike park:

 Available to buy from Manchester Bike Hire, baby not included

For those not in the know, the Unicorn is a co-operative supermarket selling vegan and organic food. I’m not vegan or vegetarian but the the Unicorn sells stuff at far lower prices than the usual high street supermarkets. It’s where I buy all my dried fruit, nuts, cereals, herbs, spices etc. It’s good.

Good Friday 2015, Cycling the Eight

It’s Good Friday so it must be the Mobberley 8

Every Good Friday there’s a bicycle ride around the pubs of Mobberley. It all started in the 1970s and has continued ever since. It’s not organised, it just happens every year. Apart from last year, when I was walking a section of the South West Costal Path, I’ve done the M8 continually since the mid 1980s.

Whilst most cycle around the route, although in previous years there have been some on horseback, a couple of runners, the inevitable walkers….usually those who have a bike that’s let them down – punctures etc.

In the early days the challenge was to get around nine pubs, starting from the Plough and Flail at twelve o’clock midday, and finishing 2 hours later at the Railway. Why nine pubs? Well, the parish of Mobberley has 8 pubs but the route takes you out of the parish to pass another pub. And it could be considered rude to pass the pub by without calling in for a swift one.

In these days of extended pub opening hours the Mobberley Eight still starts at mid-day, but it’s finish is far more relaxing. Many don’t leave the last pub until 6pm.

This year the event was supported by those fine young ladies (?) of the Macclesfield W.I. Well that’s who they said they were. The contents of the teapot were ever so slightly suspect.

At the first pub, The Plough & Flail:

 

The Frozen Mop:

 Some ladies appear to have taken a wrong turning – in more ways than one

LJH (on the left) engineer and carpenter extraordinaire‎. He built the machine below.

The ‘8’ always attracts some real feats of engineering contrivance, this year was no exception:

Front wheel drive: a 24v motor powered by 2 x 12v GelCells. the motor had a reduction drive and further gearing was via a cobbled-together derailleur mechanism hanging off the front forks. It worked but the lack of a soft-start on the motor made for some interesting standing starts.

Slightly damp conditions kept many away this year, numbers were definitely down

Two pubs were closed this year, the Stag and the Roebuck. This meant other arrangements needed to be made. One substitution was The Mobberley Victory Hall, purveyors of very fine ales indeed:

 

 The Victory Hall’s very tasteful dedication to those who fell

The Route:

 

From Timperley it’s around 25 very gentle miles

A very jolly day, some folk were jollier than others :-)

More photographs here.

Until next year then….

29th March, Pope visits Mobberley

Breaking News! The Pope makes Good Friday visit to Mobberley

Good Friday and Mobberley can only mean one thing:
Around 80 or so cyclists turned out for this year’s event, not bad considering the cold weather….but at least it was very dry.

In the beginning….

  Meeting at The Bleeding Wolf…which isn’t The Bleeding Wolf anymore

Then on to the first venue…..

…..and the next:

 

The Great Arrival

 

Interesting sidecar outfit

Pedant’s corner:

Meaningless statement: ‘Village Pub and Dining’. What’s that supposed to mean then? And where’s the village??

Easy way to do the ride….if you’re the passenger

 

Get some in!

Papal support crew

The recently elected Pope set something of a precedent by retiring before popping his clogs. He’s setting a further precedent by canvassing his successor:

The route from JJ Towers:

27 miles with around 800’ of up. And down.

Same time, same place next year then.
More piccies here.

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.