Anglesey Lanes Audax Trip

A perfect weather forecast - sunshine, low humidity & (the best bit) light winds meant I was looking forward to our trip to North Wales a lot!  Plus, I'd managed to talk Stephen into taking the tandem to join me on the 104km ride.

On the drive down, I wasn't feeling too great and afew miles from Conwy, I pulled off the road in agony. We spent saturday afternoon in the hospital in Llandudno - some pain killers later & a recommendation to 'rest on a beech' rather than ride an Audax and we were slowly pottering around Conwy.

We wandered to the harbour to find some food and then slowly made our way back to the hostel via the castle walls enjoying the stunning views over the town and up to the hills.

The morning of the audax arrived. I popped some painkillers for breakfast and we set off. I did have some twinges and some reservations about whether I should ride, but I kept those to myself knowing that Stephen would certainly not let me ride if he knew I wasn't up to it. Being a determined person is certainly a strength & a weakness.

We chatted with the three other tandem couples at the start of the ride, which took my mind off the twinges. There was a speedy looking Co-Motion, a beautiful Longstaff and a practical (S&S couplings and 26inch wheels) looking Orbit.
There was a great turn out for the ride that Holyhead CC had organised.
We started at a great pace matching the carbon fibre roadies until the first set of hills where we slowed down a bit. The views were beautiful and the lanes were very quiet. We managed to keep a great speed with me navigating from the back and we caught up with the roadies at the lunch stop.

The afternoon was a little slower and at 70k in my painkillers had worn off, but I kept going. We made it back in 5 hours 25 (including lunch and controls), so actual riding time was pretty speedy.
I was so glad to have done the ride and Stephen even enjoyed the day. The cycling club members riding made us very welcome. I'd certainly love to do this ride again.


Sunday morning brought more sunshine and we decided to walk to Great Orme along the coastal path (which is also the NCN5 bike route).
The view from the hostel breakfast room overlooked the opposite side of the estuary where we would be heading for.

A leisurely few hours of strolling along warm sands with beautiful views before the steep ascent up Great Orme.

Great Orme overlooks Llandudno (there's also Little Orme, but we didnt have chance to visit there this time).
In the sunshine it felt like being in an old fashioned / countrysidey version of San Francsico with the sea, hills and tramway.

There's a visitors centre, an expensive pub & cafe and even cable cars (the hanging variety) up here.

The weekend had been so nice weather-wise, I felt like I'd been on a proper holiday and I wished that we'd been staying for longer than just a long weekend.

Llangollen

Llangollen, Denbighshire was the destination of the second weekend trip for 2013.  After the success of the Lakes, the weekend had a lot to live up to. 

Friday morning, laughing about being off work, we set off and had our lunch break in Chester. I've never been there before and had heard much of it's charming Roman walls. We walked along the walls to the River Dee (the river we would be stopping next to all weekend) to the castle.


We lunched at The Falcon. I was happy to discover it was a Sam Smith's owned brewery - 6 different Sam Smith's brews on tap. I will need to go back when I'm not driving!

We set off again destined for the tallest single drop waterfall in England and Wales, Pistyl Rhaeadr Falls. The road twisted and turned until we reached the end of the valley, stopped by the waterfall. The place was deserted, even the tea shop was closed.

The climb to the top had lovely views, not to mention patches of ice and icicles on the waterfall.  You can stand right on the top of the falls, in summer I suspect this would be an amazing picnic spot.

Saturday morning we woke bright and early to a beautiful sunrise, eager to get some peddling miles in. 

River Dee

I have wanted to visit the famous Telford Pontcysyllte Aqueduct since the first time I saw it on tv, so I peddled along the Llangollen Canal (Route 84) smiling into the sunshine. 

 














Stephen was much braver than me - he cycled most of the way across, where it took me until almost at the end to brave putting any pressure on my pedals. It was giddying!

We cycled down to Chirk, around the castle, then back on ourselves to a lovely lunch in a Victorian style tea room. We were seriously under-dressed for the place - I wonder if that's why the waitress kept giggling at us (not convinced my jokes are that good).  We admired the vintage Raleigh bikes before we set off for the long climb ahead.


We climbed up afew miles, to be rewarded by a view of the aqueduct we had just left, the viaduct and road bridge in the distance...

count the bridges... view from Garth

...we thought it was the top of the hill.... it wasnt ...

but when we rounded the corner at the top, the view that enfolded was better than we could have imagined.

I looked at the time, 3.30pm - I knew this would be a worthy sunset spot, so we spent two hours off-roading at the very tops over Trevor Rocks, watching our shadows lengthen.

 




















We watched the clouds come in... and thankfully some colours develop as the evening chill moved in. 

We had the road to ourselves by this point, so enjoyed a carfree/carefree freewheel down to the bottom of the valley on the twisty road. A perfect end to a day in the saddle. 





On sunday, we enjoyed a walk to Horseshoe Falls and then a wander round the town, enjoying plenty of the tastes on offer and picking up a Llangollen patch to sew onto the pannier. An ideal place to explore over a long weekend. 

February route planning

A trip planned to visit an old uni friend in Bolton spurred me on to plan a ride for The Rough Stuff saturday riders this weekend. Now, I dont really know Bolton all that well, so with the help of OS maps, Sustrans website and the spurious Cycle Bolton leaflet I came up with a general route that looked ok.
Thank goodness we did a test run the week before. We battled the cold heavy rain and soon discovered that the original route was not exactly suitable...

this was one of many sets of steps that we came across after consulting Cycle Bolton leaflet! I think it needs a hefty rewrite. 

Stephen & I arent strangers to a good bit of off-road riding and the original route left us both feeling like we'd had completed a big challenge after only 17 miles. Mind you the heavy rain did mean we were riding a bit faster than usual.

Back to the drawing board and after moving Google maps' little man down some streets we hadn't test ridden, I was mainly confident in my final plan.

Saturday morning arrived - over the tops it was foggy, but dropping down in to Bolton the sun broke out & what a lovely day. Eight riders came along for the leisurely ride.
We had a morning brew at Smithhills Open Farm before hitting the bridleway across the tops which looks down over the town centre and across to the Pennines over the other side of Bury.  The contrast in the weather from the week before was dramatic.

Rainy Bolton.

Sunny Bolton

After 2 miles of off road uphill, there is some fun smooth downhill through the picturebox area of Barrow Bridge - the area is incredibly pretty, however the fact that we've gathered speed on the road means none of us stopped to take any photos.  Then through a park where I saw a lady practising her unicycling skills!

We skirted part of Doffcocker Lodge then on to High Rid Reservoir which was a good mile of rough uneven cobbles. Stephen complained bitterly of his saddle sore & other people mentioned knees & concerns for other parts of the anatomy. We made it to the end of the cobbles all in one piece each.

Leaving Doffcocker Lodge

After a long wait to cross the busy Chorley Rd we free-wheeled down to Route 80 which runs alongside the football pitches where Bolton train, some golf courses and the railway & leads into Bolton centre via Queen's Park.

Route 80

After lunch we hit probably every cobbled street in sight back to the farm. Everyone agreed it was the RSF ride with THE most cobbles on!
After such a successful ride, something had to go wrong - we managed to lock the carkeys in the car. This resulted in a 60 mile trip to collect the spare key.

Really looking forward to plotting my next route. The feeling you get when the ride is a success & everyone has had a great time is brilliant!


The rest of February riding has also been highly enjoyable - a trip with panniers loaded with wine & cake over Hud Rake to my school friend's was brilliant - I managed that hill like it was a piece of cake in my work shoes & dress too. Stunning views towards the plain of Manchester all glistening far off & below made the hill well worth while. I'm hoping to go walking up to The Halo above that road one evening after work soon.

I also discovered how hard it is to ride my 60s road bike through the snow last week. After 8 miles of dry cycling to work, the last two miles had snow left over from the day before - narrow tyres make for very poor traction going up hill. It was good fun as that section is off road on a nice smooth cycle path. And my mudguardless bike was FILTHY when we got to work.

The rest of Feb is looking like there will be more riding fun, so fingers crossed for this good weather to continue.
 

Cycling in & around The City By The Bay

Just back from just over 2 weeks in beautiful San Francisco where we hired some rather dodgy hire bikes (for 2 weeks you have to be cost effective and most tourist places hire to people for one day and cost a lot) for getting round the city and transporting ourselves to some wider Bay Area places.

This post is about my musings on cycling in another part of the world and how I found it, my next will be more focussed on the beautiful scenery and places we visited.  I'm currently zombified after a delayed flight, being rerouted back via extra airports, and my suitcase is still on it's holidays, so sorry if I ramble.

The thought of cycling in a busy city, on the wrong side of the road, in a country where you aren't 100% au fait with the traffic laws is a little intimidating when you're collecting your bike. But yesterday whilst trying to sleep on the plane, I realised that for 2 weeks I've been spoiled with a whole different cycling culture and attitude from the general populous.  The prospect of returning to the roads here gives me a sinking feeling.

Both cycling in the city itself with it's grid pattern streets and outside the city on faster more twisty roads felt much safer and easier than I could have ever hoped it would do and after just one whole day out on the bikes covering a 50 mile route, Stephen & I both remarked at how we both felt much safer than cycling in England on the roads we're used to that have traffic laws we understand. That should really speak volumes to road planners, campaigners and cyclists in the UK.

We generally followed routes published in the Cycling & Walking map of San Francisco which shows the best routes for cyclists to take when navigating the city - it avoids the busiest and hilliest roads and showed me to The Wiggle - my favourite bit of bicycle roads marking design by far - green boxes painted on the road lead you around The Wiggle and its certainly a mini bike highway. We sat at a brilliant cafe, Bean There and watched cyclists using The Wiggle as we supped coffee and ate pumpkin pie. Brilliant for people watching and also great for seeing the variety of bikes and human powered wheels that people use as their prime method of transport to get about the city limits.

Sharrows on The Wiggle

Afew points of note that really stand out to someone visiting:

• Bike lanes are wide and are separate from parking zones. 

• Bike lanes are wide enough to allow cyclists to avoid the 'door zone'

• Where there are no distinct painted lanes, there are chevrons / sharrows painted on the roads that show cyclists and other road users where cyclists should position themselves to cycle safely.

• You are not cycling in the gutter.  This makes everything so much safer, you have room to swerve for potholes and avoid hazards easily & feel much more in control. 

• Signs. This is a big one. Putting afew signs up alerts other road users that cyclists are just as important and valid as automobiles.

These included:
Bike Lane - No Parking
Share the road
Bike's have full use of lane

Green Wave on Valencia had us flying across town

now that's a bike lane!

Another thing I noticed was that drivers on the whole do not seem to speed as prevalently as they do in the UK.  Which when you really think about, is a huge culture difference. US roads are much wider, straighter and visibility is therefore much better, yet people seem to drive much more sensibly.


I never once felt like I was about to be clipped by a car over taking me.  Even in rush hour times, it felt just as safe.

The whole attitude to road users and pedestrians felt much different to here. Depending on lights, everyone has equal priority be it on foot, on human powered wheels (and we saw plenty of skate boarding and roller skating people in the bike lanes too) or petrol powered wheels and I think that is a real key in why things are so much different.
Here most drivers' attitude is that they wrongly think 'road tax' means that they pay for the roads themselves and therefore have priority.  All tax payers pay for roads, they are a called public highways.


Hiring bikes for the holiday was such a positive experience. San Francisco has loads of cyclists and this has increased exponentially over the last few years. The great work done with the Bicycle Coalition has brought a positive public image to cyclists and we were very grateful for their city cycling map resource.  Much like Sustrans here, lots is being done to promote the idea of every day cycling, though here cycling is still very much seen as a leisure pursuit rather than a valid form of transportation.

Transport ministers, road and town planners really should do some travelling, get on their bikes and see how other places can make things work.
I know in the UK our roads arent built for the volumes of traffic that they carry and not much can be done about that. But a change in some licks of paint, some added signs for cyclists and drivers and maybe we could see an eventual shift in the attitudes of traffic. San Francisco has shown it can be done, it just takes some time & patience.
I believe in merits of both on road cycling and also for separate bike lanes. Functionally for me, cycling ten miles to work has to be largely by road for it to be practical, but I love the off road network that Sustrans have created for my leisure riding, to ride side by side with Stephen and not have to even think about traffic.

Alas when Monday comes, I'll have to be up & set off an hour early to beat the worst of the traffic to cycle to work more safely & when I cycle home, I will be forced to ride on the pavement down a grid locked A-road where you literally can not cycle past the waiting cars on the road without clipping them with your bike.  I'll be passed with inches to spare at speeds that are far from sensible and see cars run red lights at every set of lights I pass. Back to reality.

Our 1st day on the bikes and initial view of the Golden Gate Bridge

Seaside Cycling

The coast may not be up in the hills, but Southport is the start of the Trans Pennine Trail so I guess it counts as Pennine Peddling  after all.

 

The Sefton Coast is my favourite local coastal area to go to & it is a great place to go riding and walking. Sure it's flat, but riding on the beach for a few miles feels quite like riding up hill pushing against all that sand... it's no wonder whenever I go, I never see anybody else with their bike on the beach.  And we dont recommend trying to ride over the dunes at all.... S had a very slow soft landing trying :-)





We set off from Southport on the cycle route then a fun  few miles on the beach down to Formby. There are markers at the side of the dunes showing where the paths are behind them. The paths are lovely and snake through pine trees. Plenty of wildlife - if you're very lucky you may spot a red squirrel, otherwise plenty of butterflies. 

After some fun swooping over the roots of trees, the cycle path follows the railway back to Ainsdale, this is to become Sustrans Route 801.



A fun, easy going 19 miles in the sunshine. Ideal after the previous day's 29 miles of thigh burning bridleways!!