My friend Andrew is mad. A couple of years ago he cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats. Mad I tell you. Anyway, for his next trick, this year he decided (as a holiday) to cycle from Skegness to Porthmadog - basically crossing the country from East to West, escaping Skegness, following a route including a) his parents' house, b) his grandmothers' house and later in the route c) lots of hills in Wales.
Anyway, like a fool I decided that I was probably able to cope with a couple of days of this - I enjoy going on my bike with people and it'd be a minor achievement to join Andrew on one of his epic rides, albeit in a small part; he knew what to expect of me (reasonably slow and struggling with hills) so we agreed that I'd join him for the hopefully flattish bits south of Stoke. What I hadn't really foreseen though was how knackered I was going to be - I'm in the middle of a tour at the moment (http://www.hope-revolution.com/ for more info) and I was really concerned on the Monday that I wasn't going to be up for it physically as I'd been working very long days and nights over the weekend/previous four days. Still, tickets were booked for the trains and I was sort of looking forward to it, so I figured I'd give it my best shot.
Consequently on Tuesday morning I cycled into the city centre (boo to Metrolink not allowing cycles on the trams) at a reasonable speed - so that was five miles that I was pleased with to start with.
I was booked on a Virgin train from Manchester to Stafford; in one of the quirks of the railway system in this country it was cheaper to travel first class, so that's what I did - got free drinks in the lounge in the station, drinks on the train and a free packed lunch! Actually, I can't really fault the journey down because Virgin gave an excellent service, left and arrived on time and was really pretty good. The only slight issue was that the place to store my bike was up by the driver and the first class carriage was right up the othe rend of the train! Still, not a lot could be done about that.
I met Andrew on Stafford station; we then spent a while trying to escape Stafford - but struggled, due to a distinct lack of signs. We found ourselves on an old railway track route, which was great - a traffic-free start to my ride. Anyway, to cut a long story short we found ourselves heading in the right direction eventually, aided by my GPS giving bearings and photocopies of Andrew's road atlas, and we followed country lanes that Andrew had chosen that weren't too busy. It was all remarkably pleasant and the pootling around the country was great. I found it reasonably OK to cycle, too - yes, the lanes were undulating but it wasn't too hilly and although I clearly slowed on uphills (and had to stop for breathers from time to time) I managed most of what was thrown at me. (I'm quite pleased that my recovery time has decreased, too - a breather of 30-60s on a hill (sorry, bump) normally gave me the energy to carry on, which was encouraging).
We joined up with the Shropshire Union canal at one point. Thinking "towpath", we took a slight diversion along it for a couple of miles. The only problem was that this towpath was quite rural - and although the grass had been cut, it was still grassy (rather than the more paved/gravelly surface I'm used to up around Manchester/Cheshire/Lancashire). I found that fairly tough going, so a couple of bridges later we came back off the canal and headed into Market Drayton - hoping to find the pub by the canal that Andrew remembered stopping in when he did his LE->JoG, thus marking a point where the routes crossed. We couldn't find it, so we just stopped in a different pub and had a drink there.
Heading over to the B&B (a couple of miles outside of Market Drayton in a place called Tern Hill) was almost exciting. We cycled past the Muller factory, but the more interesting bit is that I fell off my bike - possibly the most seriously I have for a while. We were riding down a main-ish road, leading out of the town, not exactly belting along (I'm tired at this point, don't forget) but not majorly dawdling either; I suspect we were going 12-15mph. I was aware of a cycle path starting on my left; generally we'd been staying on the roads so we stayed there, but this one appeared to be quite good quality and also not interrupted much by driveways etc, so I thought I'd go on it. After a bit there was a drop-kerb as a pedestrian crossing; I didn't go up that as I saw the bumpy paving, but shortly afterwards I saw another drop kerb, so I decided to go up it, onto the cycle path.
I think I take only partial responsibility for what happened next. My part in falling off was the fact that I'd not hit the drop-kerb obliquely enough; basically my wheel just hit it and stayed on the road, causing me to (eventually) hop up onto the path laterally, staggering along (and fortunately losing some momentum like that). Eventually I just lost it though and slammed down onto my right hand side, grazing my right arm and leg reasonably impressively. Fortunately it was probably the same sort of result as if I'd decided to throw myself at the ground though so I'd not broken anything or otherwise damaged myself. The shared responsibility comes from the fact that the drop-kerb, upon examination, wasn't very dropped. It was still a good few centimetres above the road surface; in other words, I'd hit the kerb pretty much full on and obviously not gone up it as it was too high. It reassures me that it wasn't entirely my own incompetence that caused me to fall off...!
I'm glad I fell off at the end of the day (as opposed to the beginning, not that I fell off at all!). I was tired, and from that point on for the remaining mile or so to the B&B I struggled a bit. I think the shock to my body of falling off made it say, "Hang on, what are you doing?!" and it promptly stopped working. However, I was really pleased as, including the trip to Piccadilly that morning, I'd cycled 33.77m - my 'maximum in a day' record, beating my ride last year in Caernarfon! I was really chuffed and pleased that I'd made it. Hurrah!
On reflection in the pub that evening (where I had a wonderful lamb shank in mint gravy) I was pleased the weather had been kind, too - it was sunny spells, warm but not too hot, a little breezy but not majorly windy and generally good cycling weather. I wasn't sure how I'd cope with the next day, but in the meantime I'd coped with cycling the furthest I'd ever done in a day and survived, so that was great.
Read about the Wednesday here.