Bike rides

Saturday 7th June - Chester/Deeside Dawdle

Stats:

ttm 120:16 odo 1198.4 dst 16.48 tm 1:28:57 avg 11.1 max 26.3

According to gps: odo 16.11 mov time 1h37m max 25.5 moving avg 9.9 tot time 2h17m

Route: Gmap's pedometer site

I cycled to Wales today!

Well, not from Manchester, anyway; I drove over to Chester and then followed the 'Deeside Dawdle' route from The Ultimate Cheshire Cycling Guide (Amazon). This took a good well paved route alongside the River Dee out from Chester - and to my surprise took me over the Welsh border! It was a 6m route along the river which was flat and... well, to be honest it was almost boring, but I stopped and had some lunch.

At the end of the Dee route by Hawarden Station there's a railway bridge - it used to be a swing bridge over the river but it doesn't move any more. I got there and was perusing it - standing on the platform - and a rail enthusiast appeared next to me, just in time for an EWS steel train to trundle past. He told me it'd come from south Wales to the steelworks near there.

From there I followed NCN route 5 - it turns out it's "Chester to Connah's Quay" route. You can get a map of NCN5 from sustrans website online here. This pootled along an old railway line up towards the Shropshire Union Canal, where I rejoined the towpath and went back to the city centre. Rather than head straight back to the car I looked around the shops and popped down to the Dee in the city, which was rather pleasant.

It was 16 miles - nothing too strenuous but far enough for me to feel it! Quite good weather for it, too - slightly broken cloud, and warm but not hot - although cycling alongside the Dee was at times very windy as it's otherwise very exposed there and my speed dropped right down!