Many miles to Middlewich

Day 4:

Lancaster to Middlewich – 80 miles

Planned mileage: 80 miles

Actual mileage: 88.93 miles – cause? Being so excited by the thought of Burtonwood services that we took an earlier turning that turned into a long diversion.

Cycling time: 6hrs 3mins

Average speed: 14.7mph

Maximum speed: 28.9mph

Route: http://gb.mapometer.com/en/cycling/route_1371276.html

Accomodation: Staying with Ceri & Tim (+ Dez the dog)

Had a good sleep up at the top of Nicky's tall house & were entertained on waking by the repeated safety announcements of Pink Skips, noisily delivering a skip at 7:45am! Very reluctant to tear ourselves away, especially after lovely fruit salad, poached egg & fresh bread breakfast. Nicky accompanied us down the hill to find the cycle route alongside the canal out of Lancaster – a countrified revelation in such an urban location.

Well earned & ultra tasty dinner

Picked up the beautiful old railway line alongside the River Lune (estuary part) down to Glasson before heading onto the fairly flat country roads to Garstang, waving to a surprising number of other cyclists out on day jaunts along the way. By this point the sun had come out and it was gloriously warm when I left Euan outside to pop into the Co-op to buy sandwiches etc for lunch.

Amazingly (we had been a bit worried about it – SO worth spending time planning routes properly) we seamlessly navigated Preston before meandering through numerous Lancashire small towns in the sunshine. At 12:30 we found ourselves at Lostock Hall (not at all rural as its name might suggest) and stopped for coffee and scones in a cafe. Interesting clientèle floating around, but we enjoyed our refreshments and you got a feeling there was a good sense of community locally.

After crossing a motorway (the M6) for the first of many times today, we whooshed down a lovely descent to find a scenic spot by the Liverpool-Leeds canal to pause for much needed lunch. Unfortunately we discovered afterwards that we had to begin again by climbing what was probably the longest steep hill of the day, though it wasn't a patch in either length or steepness on what we'd been up yesterday!

Virtually never branching out into countryside proper (wow, what a lot of people live in the North West of England) we successfully navigated Haydock (without seeing the racecourse) and Newton Le Willows. Probably got a little over-confident at this point... and consequently took too early a turn away from Burtonwood, ending up with an extra 4ish mile round trip to Winwick before realising our mistake and doubling back.

Now, if there are any cycle path designers reading who are wondering why more people don't use them, here's a little illustration. Coming into the outskirts of Warrington there was a nice, smoothly tarred cycle path to the left of the busy road... which at the next roundabout vanished, necessitating waiting forever to cross to the right hand side only for the opposite to happen at the very next roundabout. We rejoined the road.

We did however make use of the the excellent nature reserve-esque gravel path through woodland and wetland (and past some sewage works) to cross the Mersey and avoid a lot of horribly, horribly busy roads mid afternoon. It was a little oasis of wildlife right on the edge of the city and very well used by other cyclists too.

Euan was particularly impressed by the Manchester Ship Canal and its associated lift bridge as we crossed it. I was mostly trying not to be flattened by the heavy traffic.

After a pause for essential, energising refreshments in Stockton Heath we began our run Southwards for Middlewich. There must've been some emergency somewhere that we didn't know about 'cause the speed and aggressive driving styles of the the drivers for the whole of the remainder of the journey had to be seen to be believed. I can certainly see why novice cyclists find it difficult to get started and find the roads intimidating... Three inches of handlebar clearance at 60mph on a blind bend to overtake a cyclist is not big, clever or a sign of skillfull driving – it's a sign of an impatient, arrogant idiot. Wouldn't mind, but we were averaging close to 20mph ourselves – not bad on touring bikes with luggage.

Still, we eventually successfully made it to Ceri & Tim's around 6:45pm. Definitely a bit later than planned, but were very pleased both to see them both and to get off our bikes after such a long ride – the furthest we've done on a tour with 'gear'.

Have had a lovely evening catching up, eating (loads & loads of amazing fresh veg from their garden) and a couple of glasses of wine. Very glad we've got a shorter day to do tomorrow! Night night and sleep tight, zzzzzz....