According to gps: odo 15.63 mov time 1h38m max 28.6 moving avg 9.5 tot time 2h26m
I had a lieu day that coincided with a very sunny day (the first for a long time really that wasn't extremely windy) so I thought I'd bite the bullet and go out for a 'proper' bike ride for a change. I've got a book called "On Your Bike - Cheshire" by Sheila Simpson (info here or here) so I chose a route that was based around somewhere I knew (Delamere Forest, where I've been several times before) but this time took me on roads and similar. The car park closed at 4pm so I had plenty of time but chose the 15m shorter route - and I'm glad I did!
As I mentioned it was a lovely day - when the sun was out, it was warm. However, the air was quite cold and although I wore shorts I'm glad I wore my full fleece (that makes me "look like a tennis ball", says a colleague!). In fact, the air whistling round my sunglasses as I was going along made my eyes water so much taht I reverted back to my ordinary (larger) glasses, just to reduce the discomfort!
The main problems I had with the ride, apart from me being a bit out of practice, was that my gears on my bike still aren't right. The rear mech is wobbly, which I think is the root of most of my problems, but it meant that my bike wouldn't go into the lowest gear and would regularly jump off (rather bizarrely) the inner ring of teeth, thus either not engaging at all or, worse, jamming upt he mechanism completely. This fun was added to the fact that my front gears still aren't shifting properly and it was really demoralising having to stop every few minutes to readjust or reseat the chain.
I was also a bit upset by me strugging with some of the hills; sure, there was a 12% that I gave up on half way up (I'm not ashamed!) but there were others I gave up with either because I was knackered (grr) or because I couldn't go into a low enough gear (see above). It was disappointing on the flat, too, as my gears would often cause a clicking sound under drive - I couldn't help thinking as I listened to the rhythm of them that a) it sounded like a train journey and b) all that lovely energy I was wasting making the sound!
Yet another thing that marred the ride was the wind. Despite it being much less breezy than it had been at the weekend, there was still a biting wind that swept across and towards me a lot of the time, which was irritating at best and energy-sapping at worst. I struggled enough with the ride itself! I suspect it'd be a nice route to redo when it's sunny and warm and lovely but it didn't help much this time round.
Eventually I made it to the Delamere visitor centre/cafe the long way round; I grabbed a sandwich a bit later than I'd intended as the place I thought I'd get something (aside from the villages I went through, which seemed deserted) was closed, too. By the time I got back to the car I was a bit demoralised, knackered, fed up with my gears, peckish and just generally a bit chilly since it'd clouded over, so it wasn't one of my better excursions. I wish that I'd made it to 17 miles, too, as that's my next Eddington milestone (annoyingly I stopped just short of 17 earlier this year, too!) so there weren't actually many redeeming features of the ride other than I'd got out and about and there were a few times that it was reasonably pleasant, I suppose on reflection. Oh, and finally my GPS appears to be playing up too - the screen's being odd, a bit like my camera, and not all the buttons are working properly. So, aside from the fact my bike, camera, GPS and myself all aren't working, it was an OK ride...!