According to gps: trip odo 16.5 moving time 1h59m odo 16.47 max speed 30.0 moving avg 8.3
Another lieu day, another reasonable forecast and another keen friend to go for a ride... so that's just what we did. This time we decided to follow another route in my Haynes "Manchester Cycle Rides" (Here). This was ride 11, "Middlewood Way and Lyme Park", and marked as 16 miles and 'medium' grade, which was slightly disconcerting. Still, it seemed that there were plenty of opportunities to abort the ride and instead return by (say) the canal, so we thought we'd tackle it.
The ride started from Rose Hill station in Marple - the same place as The Big Bike started from - and indeed the first few miles followed the Middlewood Way as the Big Bike had done. The Middlewood Way is an old railway line; Rose Hill station is now a terminus, but the line used to continue south into Macclesfield. So far so good.
The ride continued... up some hills(!) into Lyme Park. Nothing that a decent cyclist couldn't cope with, but we're not decent cyclists so struggled up most of them in bottom gear and, I must admit, we walked a couple of the inclines in the Park itself as we were just too weary. However, at the top of the woodland climb/walk there were fairly spectacular views over Lyme Park and from there, over the top of the hill, it was a quite quick downhill run towards the car park. From there, we diverted to the refreshments and shop - where we both had lunch!
After lunch we tackled the hill rising past the front of Lyme Hall, and cycled along the top of the ridge, with The Cage to our left (an old hunting lodge). Upon leaving the park via the East gate (which was easier said than done as we were knackered by this point!) we were faced with a fairly steep decent down a footpath, then a sharp ascent again. This would have been all well and good, but it was extremely rough - not just slightly stony, but extremely rocky. Again, on most of the uphill on this surface we gave up and walked it - cycling down it was bad enough! This bit of the route is part of the Gritstone trail.
Once we were back on the road it was much easier - a flat surface, but also we got to go down again all the height we'd gained! It got off to a slow start, but I hit 31.1mph on the steep descent down towards Disley. It's probably a good thing that there were speed bumps (and a dustcart blocking the road) as although I'd have liked to have gone faster I'm not sure it'd have been a good idea! Fortunately, the guide warned us about the speed bumps too, which was good advice.
From there, we joined the A6 - the route was to nip down the A6 for a couple of miles, rejoin the Middlewood Way and head back to the station. I was a little nervous about joining the A6's traffic but my fears were ill-founded - although we had articulated trucks trundling past us, it's a wide road and drivers seemed considerate, too. Also, there were a few roadworks which slowed the traffic down.
From Disley down towards the Middlewood Way was actually great fun - because it was all downhill on a fast road for a fair distance it was easy to get a fast speed (25mph+) and sustain it with hardly any pedalling. This is when things started to go wrong; before we joined the A6 we'd planned for me to lead and my friend to follow, as I had the route and the map, but it transpired that we were actually the other way round. To my dismay, therefore, I followed my friend as he got a bit carried away going downhill, and sailed straight past where we should have joined the Middlewood way again! Of course, there was no way that I could catch him or communicate with him, so I just decided to continue to enjoy the long fast downhill (even though I had at the back of my mind that we'd have to climb up back again). He eventually stopped at the junction at Hazel Grove... whereupon I told him we'd whizzed past our turning some mile or two back, up the hill! Cue a bit of a giggle, working out what we were going to do next, getting out the OS map and determining a route back...
As it turned out, it wasn't too bad; yes, we had to climb up again but we chose another route that took us back to the railway track via a quieter road (and also one with a slightly shallower incline). Having made it up here, we had a bit of a problem actually rejoining the path (for various reasons - you can't get to the track from the bridge we got to, and some stables didn't want us going up their drive in spite of the marked public footpath there...). Still, we eventually found our way back on the track, and headed back to Rose Hill Station without further mishap!
It was a good ride, if somewhat exhausting. Nevertheless, we /did/ cycle some of the hills (mainly the ones on roads) and so I don't feel so bad for walking some of the other steeper, rougher, off-road hills! It was interesting thinking back to when I last took my bike to Lyme Park; it was before I started cataloguing my rides (perhaps a year or two ago now) and I recall going /down/ a path similar to the one we walked up through the woods and out into the Cheshire country road system... I'm somewhat pleased therefore to have done it again, but within the wider context of a longer ride.
Also worth noting is that it was my first ride with a pannier and rack. Those nice guys at uk.rec.cycling helped me to find something that would fit my bike (as I don't have the standard places to clip a rack to). Having the pannier was quite good, as it meant I didn't have it on my back; it did make my ride slightly wonky briefly whilst I got used to it but in the end it was actually really quite good. My concerns that my heel might catch it were unfounded, too. I think it'll take a little getting used to but nevertheless if today is anything to go by I think it was a good investment. Unfortunately my rear brakes were playing up a little today though (they just don't seem to be braking as hard as they should, hmm) so we did a bit of car-park tweakage, and my rear gear shifter still struggles to make my gear go into 5th. I wonder if my bike needs a service. I've done 360 miles on it this year - not exactly around the world three times, but not bad, really.
So, 17 miles. A good ride; I'm pleased with that and suitably knackered now!