In Training
2nd July 2015
Sorry there has not been a blog for the last couple of weeks, as both graham and myself have been away on holiday to the Greek Islands and Cornwall respectfully. The storm clouds had built up during the afternoon ,and both Graham and myself had got wet cycling home from our places of employment, but this didn’t deter us from our ride this evening ,mainly for a couple of reasons , we had both been on holiday for 2 weeks and on Sunday 12th July we were competing in the Manchester to Blackpool cycle ride for charity. As you know we normally travel around the area off road ,looking for unusual and interesting things, but this week we had to put the extreme biking on hold as we needed to get some road riding done ,in preparation for our charity ride.
We arranged to meet at the Jaguar garage in Farnworth , with the new cycle path open over the viaduct in Darcy Lever ,I decided to use this to get onto Manchester road and travel up through Moses Gate to our meeting point ,as the rain now began to get heavier. Waiting in the rain for Graham I planned our route out in my head. After about 10 minutes wondering what was taking him so long to get here , I decided to look round the corner to see I could see him , low and behold he’s sat on the wall waiting for me, we both could have been there all night as Graham never brings his ” very expensive phone ” with him.
Now we had joined forces ,I told Graham of the plans for our route, he wasn’t to eager at first because neither of us really like riding on the roads ,due to the traffic that is not always kind to cyclists, but by the time we had rode up through Farnworth and to Springfield rd in Kearsley ,we were getting into it and headed over Blackleach Country park towards Walkden. We emerged from the park onto Moss lane and up onto Manchester road , here we were looking to pick up the No 55 cycle route, but unfortunately we weren’t exactly sure where it was, so we travelled up and down streets looking in vain. We did know there was an entrance to it at the side of our friends house, so we headed for that. Going along Park Road and up onto Hilton lane until we joined the Cycle route. We followed this route until we eventually came out onto Cleggs lane here we took a short break on the bridge over the motorway, discussing the plans for our ride to Blackpool. We noticed a path that went along the side of the motorway ,so along we went ,this brought us out at Anchor lane in Highfield ,here we had a little look to see if we could find a continuation of the path but sadly we couldn’t and decided to head towards home . Up Highfield road and then down Plodder lane until we parted company at the junction with Bradford road, Graham continuing down Plodder lane and myself down Bradford road, here I noticed I had a problem with the front wheel disc brake sticking on, this proved nearly disastrous at the junction with Weston street when I was setting off turning right at the lights the bike wouldn’t move at all and I nearly tumbled off in front of a car, but my off road extreme biking instincts kicked in avoiding a accident. Eventually I was soon home after just fettling the brakes, once I was home safely I text Graham as he done the same, always looking out for your extreme cycling buddy.
