The Diary - Part Seven

Day - Saturday 8th July

Breakfast this morning was stood up outside the delightful Spar shop in Chester admiring the pages and pages of "Chavs who are barred from this shop" stuck up in the window. After scoffing much milkshake and sausage rolls, we were on our way at 9.45am.

The morning's ride was pretty uneventful, and thankfully flat. Much of the route was on main roads and navigation was easy. The miles were clocking up thick and fast.

Then we happened on a town called Lymm (near Warrington in Cheshire). The whole town seemed to have been dug up (take that as you will: the local residents looked like they had recently been disinterred and the roads had been carted off in skips) just in time for their annual festival. I have never seen anything like it. How a town no bigger than, say, Yeovil, can have a dozen or more town criers, I'll never know. Bizarre.

We left quickly.

Soon we reached our lunchtime destination - Leigh. If Chester was chav-tastic, then Leigh is by far and away chav capital of England (and possibly the entire universe). So much burberry, shell suits and bling in one place cannot be healthy. There was no balance. No nice bits to off-set the sprawling Matalan / McDonalds retail parks. In an effort to fit in, we bought our lunch from a Bargain Booze off-license, not letting one another out of sight for a minute...

Humour isn't up to much in Leigh either - as we cycled through a young lad clearly impressed his equally intellectual mates by shouting "huh huh. Tour De France!" several times.

Heading on towards Chorley, following Doug's instructions (thankfully the pressure was off me in that respect) we ventured back out into the countryside. Doug's instruction of "in 5.5 miles turn right onto Grimeford Lane" was dutifully ignored as we cycled 7 miles along that road, before I could catch Martin and Doug to gloat that my mileometer had said 5.5 miles at the exact place we should have turned right. They didn't believe me.

From Chorley onwards, we encountered different terrain and different weather. The hills got steep again, and the drizzle started to soak us through. I was struggling and so let Matt, Doug and Martin carry on at their pace, while Helen and I follwed on at our slightly slower one.

The descents became dangerous in the conditions, although I still managed a respectable 46.6mph at one point. We arrived at Slaidburn Youth Hostel drenched to the bone at 7.45pm, and after showers etc, rewarded ourselves with a fantastic meal at the Hark to Bounty Inn.

Kerry (acting as vehicular support for the day) and I sneaked off to enjoy a bit more comfort in a nearby hotel while the others arranged to go back to the pub for breakfast in the morning. One week done, one to go!

Day: 7, Distance: 90.6 miles, Cycling Time: 7hr 14min, Ave Speed: 12.5mph, Max Speed: 46.6mph