According to gps: trip odo 14.2 moving time 1h53m odo 14.21 max speed 18.9 moving avg 7.5
This ride I have a guest author doing the write-up! Three of us from the ops dept went out on this occasion - Dan, Richard and me. Stealing my writing style, Richard writes:
"Another Tuesday, and yet more lieu time! The weather looked a little more promising than last Tuesday, with even the hope of a little sunshine. We decided to stay away from the canals so we chose a route from Peter's book, which would take us along the route of the closed East Lancs railway. The route starts at Salford Crescent and heads through Salford and the Irwell valley, ending at the ASDA in Radciffe. Peter has previously cycled the next route in the book, which goes from (t)here towards Tottington.
So we set out with another of our colleagues (we'll get the whole of our office on their bikes eventually) from Salford. The first fun was actually finding a car parking space, as parking at the station wasn't the best. Peter picked me up from the station, and then drove slightly up route, nearly losing the bikes [slight exaggeration! -ed] from the back of the car when we went over a rather large speed bump. Eventually we found a suitable spot, and we got on our way, navigating a on road section to regain the official route.
The main bulk is off-road on the ex rail line, and so was invariably a bit muddy due to the recent weather we've had. Add to this the fallen leaves, it lead to a quite slippy ride. This was demonstrated nicely when one of us applied our brakes, his bike skidded and he fell to the floor in a spectacular manner. As the route continued we past the occasional remnant of the path's heritage, including a rather strange structure - sort of a plinth with nothing on it, engraved with the names of different plants - ideas anyone? [see below - ed]
A rather steep hill then took us to the bridge over the M60, and into Bury. The path was better for this section, and we cycled through a closed station, before swiftly arriving at the ASDA. No cafe at this one, as they seem to have decided to change all their cafes into MacDonalds. So we sat outside eating our sarnies and realising quite how muddy our bikes actually were.
The return journey was downhill, which surprised us as the outward leg had seemed to also be downhill. We averaged a much quicker speed for the inward section however, and one of my friends decided he wasn't going to slow down at all, getting himself rather mud splashed.
When we got back to the end of the of road section by the Irwell, we consulted the map to see if their was an alternative route to the road. It turned out there was, by cycling along the river bank and crossing further up to meet the road. The bank was grass, which makes for fairly heavy going, and added to the soggyness of the ground, we made fairly slow progress along this section. A first for all of us though was when we had to climb up to a raised section of path, and got wheel spin. It feels quite weird to be pedalling and not getting anywhere!
The bank got even muddier, but we got to the bridge and cycled the fairly small way back to the car. We considered the going to a jet wash for a time! The car was still there when we returned, despite my concerns. This was probably helped by the rather loud dog in a nearby yard."
So, there we go - that's Richard's write-up and I've little more to add - other than discovering what the weird things were that we found en-route. They were all part of the Irwell Valley Sculpture Trail - that link describes it well. The thing that Richard describes above is entitled 'Trinity' and is supposed to be something to do with a memorial for the Navvies who built the line. It was, frankly, a lovely day for late November and a really nice ride. The added bonus is that it took my Eddington number over 14, too! Hurrah!
The route we took was largely based on ride 10, "Irwell Valley Trail", from "Manchester Cycle Rides" by Neil Simpson, published by Haynes (Here).