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.