Rides – R O T H A R . C O M

One Way Ticket to Marple

Time to catch up with some friends this weekend, so the family headed over in the car and I set off a couple of hour before them on the bike. One way trip cross country heading East over the hills and then dropping down into Manchester. Leaving Formby, the IF express called at Ormskirk, Parbold, Rivington, Bolton, Radcliffe, Prestbury, Manchester, Stockport and ended its journey in Marple.

62 miles 3,000ft climbing. Several spokes came loose in the rear wheel to the extent that it wouldn’t go through the brakes even with the callipers in open position without rubbing. Then on looking at my stats on Strava it turned out that the cadence magnet had fallen off my left hand crank on the previous ride…

View towards Standish

Cracking weather too, not to hot cloudy with sunny spells and only a breath of wind. I’d forgotten how bad the road surfaces in Manchester and Stockport are though. Loads of pot holes.

stockport

Longest ride in years

Over 50 miles on a bike. I’ve not done that in a long time, but I did manage it today and actually felt good the whole ride. Even managed to set a new PB on one of the final stretches to home. Strava is good for letting you know when you think that you’ve had a good ride and match this agains past rides on the same roads. Stepping up the mileage seems to be working. More hill work during the week this week and perhaps a trip to the seaside in County Durham.

The view to Blackpool from Marine Drive.

It was windy out there, but I just seemed to find a tempo that worked for me and pressed on (had achy knees on a couple of occasions). Stopped on Marine drive and took a photo across the Ribble Estuary – you can see Blackpool Tower…

A tale of Moss-adventure

Last night I mapped out a near 50 mile route in Strava for this morning. Then discovered that unless you have a Garmin computer, you can’t do much with it. So in the end, rode out this morning with the concept of a route in my head and managed about half of it and came in 18 miles short.

I had wanted to get to Chorley with the option in future of heading to Rivington, but was fundamentally screwed when I went the wrong way out of Ormskirk. My route took me back over some roads I’d ridden previously in reverse. I’d found it hard to follow routes here previously and it’s clear that Google Maps has a few errors around here:

On the Moss

Other tarmac roads just turned into gravelled roads which caused some amusement. 23mm slicks on dusty dirt roads gave some interesting handling and miraculously no punctures.

On the Moss