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!

Sunday 29th July, Walkies to Stockport

It had been a late night (a very early morning actually) caused by playing at a wedding ceilidh in Kettleshulme the previous evening. I woke up and realised I needed to get out for a walk.

You know how it is.

I had only very recently had an email enquiring about walks from my mate Jon who just happens to be a very fine fellow – a backpacker, Challenger, cyclist, Ukelele player (ukelele-ist?) and all round good egg. Now Jon’s partner Emma is a very fine fiddler – in fact she was playing in the same ceilidh band as me the previous evening. They live in Northenden, just a couple of miles from JJ Towers.

After an early morning exchange of text messages The Battle Plan was finalised and put into action. I arranged to meet Jon at the end of his road and we would walk to Stockport on the banks of the River Mersey. The walk started well enough, it’s a route I’ve done before….but that didn’t stop me taking a wrong turning soon after our rendezvous.

Oh dear me no, I can get lost anywhere. Just ask around.

With the aid of a map we were soon back on track, following the swollen River Mersey - the cause of which were the recent heavy rains.

Jon, politely trying to look like he was happy for me to navigate

 

Cyclists and runners whizzed past us as we sauntered towards Stockport. The sound of the M60 traffic was a constant reminder that our ‘country walk’ was in fact a narrow artery of green through suburban south Manchester.

 

Jon had the foresight to grab a Ginster’s Pastie (cold, so he didn’t have to pay VAT) before we set out. I just had a banana and a bottle of water. There may have been a Mars Bar too, but I’m not admitting to that without a signed witness statement.

In the not too distant past The River Mersey was a liveless and polluted watercourse, poisoned by the untreated waste poured into it by industry….and the scroats who used to dump stolen cars into it. Today the river is much cleaner – chubb and trout have been caught, although the local cormorant population make successful angling difficult.

One that got away?

The weather was changeable – hot sunshine one minute, then heavy rain. Our waterproofs were on and off much of the walk.

We arrived in Stockport town centre just in time to miss the train back to Timperley. Luckily there is a decent Sunday bus service so we hopped onto the next bus and were back home in no time.

Thanks to Jon for his company – it’s good to have company on little jaunts like this.

Vital statistics: 15km, with not a lot of up….around 50m. Nice though.

July 2012

I’ve rather neglected this blog recently…so I’ll just post some pictures.

More of July’s photographs are here

More stuff to follow….when I’ve finished demolishing my remaining stocks of Aldi Dark Chocolate. Which is rather good.