Bike rides

(Good) Friday 14th April - East Manchester Towpaths and Daisy Nook

Stats:

TTM: 6:04 ODO 58.4 DST 15.29 TM 1:43:23 AVG 8.8 MAX 25.5

Route: Gmap's pedometer site

As I've mentioned before, I got a book of Manchester cycle rides for Christmas, so I thought I'd do another from that guide. This was based on ride 4 in "Manchester Cycle Rides" by Neil Simpson, published by Haynes (Here).

I went with a colleague, Dan, on this bike ride. We drove to - well, we were planning to park in the big ASDA car park in Openshaw, opposite the new Commonwealth stadium. However, there were stupid numbers of vehicles queueing to get in for some reason. (What are they thinking? "Ooh, it's a bank holiday! Let's have a family trip to ASDA!"?). Anyway. We parked on the road, just round the corner from the velodrome, and began following the route - joining the Ashton canal, we followed the towpath up towards Droylesden. The flat bits were great, but there's lots of locks on the Ashton canal as the canal descents from the hills down into the city centre. Obviously, starting near the city centre... there were lots of locks to climb up. To my great surprise, I managed most of them; it seems that I can manage shortish bursts of energy to go up hills (but the long hills still kill me!). Other than that, I really like going along canal towpaths... they're generally quiet, flat and take you through the industrial past of the city.

Anyway, following the route in the book, we headed through Droylesden, over the M60 to Daisy Nook Visitor Centre/Country Park. (Page about Daisy Nook.) According to the guide, this was a good half way point, so we stopped and had some food from the little cafe there and got chatting to a (one-eyed) chap who was waiting for his friends; he used to do a lot of cycling ("Oh, I didn't go far - only 80 miles a day, perhaps"!) and told us about the park and some of the places you could cycle to. We thought that since we were there we'd explore a little more, so we took a detour up the (now deserted) canal; originally I think it was the Hollinwood canal (info here) and specifically the Fairbottom branch. There are some locks that are blocked up now there, and a couple of the basins that were being used for fishing in were clearly part of the lock pool system. There's still some impressive aqueducts there too, and one can see the route of the canal bed in places where it is used as a bridleway (and the towpath used for walkers/cyclists). We followed it up to a reservoir (again, part of the lock system) and then back again; we then took a detour from our detour, following the signs and info boards up the branch towards Bardsley. From there, we went on to Park Bridge, info here and here, which is an old coal mine area and ironworks. Park Bridge appears to be where a lot of the iron produced for the cotton industry in the north west was made; obviously all those mills required machinery and equipment and the iron was often sourced from here.

We retraced our path back to the Daisy Nook visitor centre and then followed the original route again... something else we'd not expected was having to wade through hundreds of people who were attending the Easter fairground! Still, that wasn't too bad... what was too bad was the hill leaving the valley again! I made a valiant attempt at attacking it but gave up half way. Ah well. I can remember the time when I wouldn't even have been able to manage that!

From there it was fairly straightforward, following the road over the M60 again and heading back through Failsworth, where we joined the towpath of the Rochdale canal. This was perhaps the most enjoyable bit of the journey, since we had to drop all the height we'd gained earlier in the ride - so it was quite a good, fast ride down past about a dozen locks and through the industrial wastelands of Failsworth. At lock 77 we left the towpath and followed the on-road cycle path (narrowly missing a lost exhaust) back to the car. (Just before we got to the car, at the top of having gone up another bit of a hill, my right leg gave up - I think it got cramp, but it locked in the straight position. Irritating when you're only 100m from the car!)

So, all in all an enjoyable ride, if a little longer than I'd expected. The weather was very nice (I began to regret not wearing shorts over my, er, shorts, rather than jeans) and although the ground was damp and had puddles it wasn't excessively wet and muddy. I really felt knackered when I got back though - I wonder if it's because a lot of the towpath and Daisy Nook was on unsurfaced/reasonably worn paths? However, I am quite impressed at how I'm improving. Next time perhaps I'll conquer all the hills, not just some of them!