The weather this weekend was forecast to be sunny so I went out on a ride with a colleague; he lives near Patricroft station, in Eccles. The plan was to ride up the Bridgewater canal, near his house, up through Worsley and out into the country towards Leigh. His bike hadn't been used for a while so when I arrived he was fixing his brakes and gears; I say 'fixing' but the rear brake cable was so frayed that we disconnected it completely! We cycled away to the canal together - thinking the brake wouldn't be too much of a problem as the Bridgewater canal is renowned for being flat; it being the first canal they hadn't got as far as inventing locks, so it's all level!
We cycled up through Worsley and the delph there, then out under the M60 towards Leigh. The towpath was very polarised in quality; some of it was excellent, but stretches of it were boggy, to say the least; cycling through some of the mud in places was really quite tricky at times, with my wheel spinning a lot and it just generally being fairly tough going. Still, the views from the canal were quite pleasant; we could see the Chill Factor at times.
It all started going pear-shaped near Astley; my friend had a puncture. Well, not so much a puncture as more of a blow-out - there was a loud pop/bang and he ground to a sudden halt! We changed the inner tube, but we'd not got much further before he noticed a rubbing sound; there was a bulge in the tyre. His tyre had worn through which meant the inner was protruding; consequently his rear tyre was effectively dead.
We had a chat to work out what to do; in the end we were near the East Lancs Road (A580) so we joined that from the canal, heading back home. There's a good cycle path down there so we limped home, him on a soft rear tyre and me pootling along with him; I could tell it was increasing resistance significantly. We had it pumped up just enough so it didn't damage the rim.
So, all in all, not too bad - a truncated ride, but still 13 miles (half of which was very off-road at times!). Shame we didn't get as far as we'd intended, but it got us out of the house!
PS I forgot the batteries for my GPS so no GPS stats, sorry!