A Little Bit of R & R

Today’s ride was going to be a long one, Clun to Runcorn, a distance of some 81 miles. Because of this we were up early, fuelled up with a good breakfast and on the road by around around 8.45pm.

The first part of the day involved a great deal of climbing and descending which started with a lethal descent down a farm track; a bit of rural nastiness that I’d forgotten.  There was no excuse for this as I had come down this bone rattling lane, one could hardly call it a road, twice before.  Along with one or two other parts of the route from Land’s End to John O’ Groats that we had previously modified, we should have removed this short cut and gone round the main road out of Clun.  Our bikes were definitely not designed for this kind of punishment.  It would have been great fun on a mountain bike but was almost lethal on a light weight racing bike.

Later in the day, a rather more pleasant descent took us through the picturesque Hope Valley. The others belted down this descent as if they were on one of the alpine runs of the Tour de France.  I went at a more leisurely pace.  Anything over 30mph and the chances are I would need to change my cycling shorts at the bottom of the climb.  Beside the effect such high speeds might have on my ability to control certain parts of my anatomy, I rather liked to enjoy the beauty of the countryside, not have my eye glued to the road looking for potholes or other obstacles which might flip me off my bike.  This downhill section of the day’s ride ended at the village of Minsterley.  Two miles after that at the village of Pontesbury we headed off towards Shrewsbury.

A few years previously Julia and I spent a pleasant few days in a hotel just outside Shrewsbury in what had been a school for the blind.  Perhaps its most famous ex pupil was the Labour Politician David Blunket.  Shrewsbury is a lovely town to spend a few days wandering round but what stands out about this short break was nothing to do with historic buildings and pleasant pubs.  We were about to leave to head home and whilst we sat in the car in the car park Julia totted up the bill for our stay.  She noticed that the hotel had not charged us for a bottle of wine and the cheese course we had consumed during a meal in the hotel restaurant.  Being honest sorts, we trudged back to the reception desk and pointed this error out to the receptionist and said we wanted to pay what we owed.  Forty minutes later we were still standing there and rather wishing that we hadn’t bothered and, if you will excuse an awful pun, “turned a blind eye” to the mistake, which was after all in our favour.

Shrewsbury is a very small town and we were soon through it, crossing the river Severn at Welsh Bridge.  Just past the bridge there is a huge modern sculpture called Quantum Leap, evoking images of a double helix.  This biological reality which lies at the heart of the Evolutionary Process had been created to celebrate Darwin’s bi-centenary.

The rest of the day’s cycling, although long, was comparatively flat and not that inspiring aesthetically.  I used the motor on my bike sparingly during the first part of the day but kept it on all the latter part of the day as I had plenty of battery left. This enabled me to keep up with the others, not something I normally accomplished.

It was a lengthy day but due to the relatively flat nature of the route we did it quite quickly averaging around 12mph.  Our destination was The Holiday Inn at Runcorn.  Not having any rest days on our journey north The Holiday Inn was a concession to pure luxury.  A swimming pool, and a jacuzzi to ease our sore legs and a great meal in the hotel restaurant.  I had a mixed grill and amazed myself that I managed to eat that much grub at one sitting as my appetite is not what it used to be when I was much younger.  And so, to bed, bliss, utter bliss.

 

 

The Big Push

And so, we approached the final challenge of the day Pentre Hodre.  I knew this was going to be one of the major climbing tests for a seventy-year-old cyclist and the bike which Lizzie named “Miss Ribble”.  What I had not reckoned with was that this time round it would prove to be a navigational test as well.  This navigational challenge manifested itself in two ways.  Firstly, Scott got lost on the way from second lunch to the climb and Ollie had to go back in search of him.  Secondly, I took a wrong turn half way up and seemed to end up finding the steepest route possible to the summit.

Scott and Ollie were somewhere behind me and nowhere near attempting the climb when I turned onto the dreaded hill.  Lizzie and Adam were ahead of me.  I managed the first steep section of the climb with consummate ease which was a great boost to my confidence.  I could see Adam in front of me and was gradually gaining on him when I was ground to a halt by a woman in a car descending the hill who wasn’t going to give an inch or stop to let me pass.  I was forced to the side of the road and came to an untimely halt.  Some rather un clerical words were uttered as she passed me by at speed.  Pity she couldn’t hear them. Consequently, I had a job getting going again as I was still on a steep part of the ascent but fortunately managed it.  In the meantime, I had lost sight of Adam.   I came to a fork in the road, didn’t notice the sign which pointed left to Pentre Hodre Farm and, as a consequence, went straight on.  I kept climbing but realised after a while that I didn’t recognise anything on the road.  I stopped and asked two people if I could get to Clun via the road I was on.  Neither of them seemed to know where Clun was which struck me as rather strange as it couldn’t have been more than a few miles away.

Rather than go back and try and find the right turning, as the road was ascending and seemed to be nearing the summit, I decided to press on.  This was a wise decision and I realised later that the route had taken me in a loop which eventually enabled me to re-join the actual route just before the summit.  However, the last few hundred yards before the summit the road really kicked up and I was struggling as was the motor on my e bike.  Every time my foot passed the motor, I could feel the heat coming off it and was worried that it might well seize up.  In order to alleviate this, I wove from one side of the road to the other to lessen the gradient.  The road was very narrow and unfortunately, I hit the bank and once again ground to a halt and was faced with a standing start.  After a considerable struggle I managed to get going again. This part of the climb was very steep, in fact steeper than the route I should have been on.  Just as the top on the ascent hove into view and I was about to join the prescribed route, I saw Lizzie just in front of me. This was something of a relief as I was now confident that I was once more on the right road. I caught her up and we rode together to the view point at the top of Pentre Hodre. The intention was to wait for Scott and Ollie.

After various phone calls we found the Adam had already made it to the pub in Clun, Ollie had found Scott and was doing the climb.  Lizzie and I were getting extremely cold as we waited and so it was decided that we would descend to Clun and met up with Adam, Julia, Mary and a couple of former parishioners who had retired to Clun. Eventually Ollie and Scott arrived and we all had a drink together before ending up at the Youth Hostel for a little bike maintenance and a well-earned pasta meal.

Wormelow Tump

Fortified by a full English we got away from Monmouth in reasonable time. The first part of the day was basically taken up with what might best be described as lumpy climbs; in other words, not long or particularly steep climbs but, after the extra ascents and mileage forced on us yesterday, I found them quite exhausting.  So, although in terms of mileage the day was not long, I found that my legs were tired.

Eleven miles out of Monmouth we passed through a one-horse town which seems to consist of a garage, a village hall and little else but had one of my favourite names on the entire trip – “Wormelow Tump”.  I noted however that for some reason best known to themselves the good Burghers of the village had dropped the “Tump” and the street signs referred to it merely as “Wormelow”.  As I cycled through, chuckling to myself at the expense of said village, it struck me that “Wormelow Trump” would be an excellent name for a Folk Band, though by the look of the few residents I passed on my way through, I felt the first concert to launch the new band, held of course in the village hall, might well prove to be a disaster and the band would be finished before it really got started.

Having been robbed on the stunning views of Tintern Abbey because of yesterday’s frustrating detours it was rather rewarding to get a pleasant view of Herford Cathedral as we crossed the bridge over the river Wye.  Hereford itself we found was a busy city traffic wise but being relatively small we soon passed through it and into country once again.

Always in the back of my mind was the fact that at the virtual end of the ride today was the major challenge of Pentre Hodre which on the previous LEJOGS I had never managed to climb and ended up walking for a good part of it.  This time, with my trusty Ribble, I was confident I had at least a more than fifty percent change of beating this monster of a hill.

Before we took on the challenge of Pentre Hodre, we stopped to fuel up at an attractive little village called Brampton Bryan.  It’s main claim to fame is an incredible and very ancient yew hedge which has to be seen to be believed.  Well worth a visit if you are ever in the area.  In 2011 and 2013 whilst we were having lunch a woman came along walking her dog.  We wondered as we nodded in acknowledgement as she passed us by if she had remembered us from the previous trips.  As we did not actually speak to her on any of the three occasions she passed us by we will never know and can only speculate.  Perhaps rumours will be circulating in the village about the strange fact that every couple of years a group of relatively young cyclists led by a strange grey-haired old man might be the beginnings of some kind of esoteric movement.  Perhaps we might even make it onto the agenda of the local parish council.

Well we could linger no more and could not put of the major challenge of the day and so we set off towards the dreaded Pentre Hodre.  So far, Scott had managed the whole day without bike issues, would this hill be the undoing of man and machine?  You will have to see next time I publish my blog.