Category: England

Or rather Winterbourne Monkton. There’s a few Winterbournes around: chalk streams that run in winter. How they’ve checked the flood maps before building.

Gloucestershire’s finest Cotswolds landscape unfolds before us today. Really quite lanes, rollercoastering across the hills, avoid the honey spots. The Lavender farm was easily identifiable, a new colour on the horizon.

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Northleach was a good find, a thriving smallmarket town, once on the stagecoach route to South Wales. Some of the residents seem to have survived since it was given its market charter in 1290. The person making our sandwich, a good decision as no further shops appeared, seemed to think we could wait until the next Millennium. They were good though, munched outside another pretty church in Driffield.

Running parallel with the A419 reminded us what road noise is. The various developments on the Cotswolds Waterparks reminded us of the idyllic adverts in the Sunday supplements: reality is different.

This also is a transition into the Wiltshire landscape. More arable than pastoral and the reappearance of bricks. The hill reappears with a vertical jolt at Clyffe Pypard. The clue was in the name. Then a rolling descent towards Avebury.

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Grand day’s cycling. Tomorrow to Verwood.

Today’s ride started with some memory joggers. That’s the spot where the person stopped watching his canal tv as I was providing more entertainment falling out of a canoe into the (stinking) Coventry Canal: it’s easy said Barbara. Then via Hartshill to Galley Common and the lovely wee miner’s terraced house we left in 1988 to move to Swansea. No plaque as yet.

What’s interesting in these outskirts of Nuneaton is the sheer amount of house building going on. I think only the spoil heap on Tunnel Road is safe. The new estates do look good though, well spaced.

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Soon enough we’re at Meriden and the ‘old’ centre of England. They mark it with more style than Fenny Drayton, so good luck to them. The Hatch coffee bar is the best value coffee and cakes we’ve had all trip.

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We’re getting into HS2 build territory now. The scale of the site we pass is impressive. Having lunch later in a great church yard in Snitterfield, who hide their Shakespeare family connections, and looking at the crumbling fabric of the building, I can’t help but think the HS2 money might have been better spent on the social infrastructure of communities.

Onto Stratford upon Avon (strangely quite) we head along the Greenway rail to trail for 5 miles. Ending at Long Marton, there’s a view of what turns out to be a huge train coach and goods wagon knackers yard.

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And an almost sudden transition into Cotswold land: fine stone houses with that lovely orange glow. Gates the people of Alderley Edge’s Cheshire would be proud of. Chipping Campden is the stop after the lumpy bump over the hill to get here. Quite a few shops and pubs closed for good here too, still a grand wee place.

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So it’s up and over straight after breakfast heading to Avebury.

Yesterday was a rest day. This consisted of: looking for a cafe that did breakfast (that’s the one with the queue), and enjoying the public park. Meeting Steve and Andrea after 30years, an ex colleague of Barbara, passed the evening. The other activity was gaining a reassurance the bikes locked in the store will be accessible in the morning at 8. It’s all sorted.

Set off late today. No one to unlock the bike store until the cleaner showed up at 09:15.

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Ashbourne feels slightly down on its heels. It’s also down in a dip. Heaving the bikes up was today’s only real hill. The rest was a long slide down onto the central plain through rolling countryside. Derby and Burton negotiated via old railway lines and Sustrans ways, we entered Leicestershire.

Here we find two central points. Well close by as private (farming) land is sacrosanct around here. Coton in the Elms is the first point from the sea. Fenny Drayton is the new (as of 2012) centre of England. The farmer we saw on the BBC article proudly showing a post has obviously changed his mind. His wife politely but firmly told us to bugger off.

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We were welcomed to Atherstone with a sign proudly stating “a historic market town”. Must look for the market towns that have no history I thought. The other sign which made me think was “humped pedestrian crossing”. Is this legal? Or did it mean humped pelican [whilst] crossing?

Tonight we met up with Mick and Jane from Nuneaton. 25year catch up. Tomorrow Chipping Campden.

Here’s today’s ride.

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A short day in miles, a long – good – day of peaks. 1000m of ascent in the first 30 miles, one of the hottest days we’ve had, made it memorable.

We were in three counties today. Leaving Cheshire we entered the Peak District in Staffordshire and ended in Derbyshire. Starting in leafy lanes and manicured hedgerows it subtly changed into more ‘worked’ farm landscapes. Then rolling peaks.

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Popular with road cyclists too: the Rapha gear was noticeably more common at the start. As well as clothing the social skills were mixed. Some waved or greeted (perhaps noticing we were greetin’ going up some of the climbs); the others focused on the purity of the pursuit of speed and looking good. Like me.

I remember Wildbourclough from Manchester days. Not very relevant as we only went nearby, just a fun memory of a pub (Crag?). Our lunch was in a fine hostelry near the top of the day. The Winking Man: the sign writer probably had to pay attention.

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The final assault upwards before the gentle decline of the Tissington Trail, was a murderous 21%. Shady though so that made all the difference.

Tissington Trail, rail to trail around 1964. Well used today: lovely to see such a variety of people walking and cycling. Ashbourne arrived at the end of the tunnel, also tbe start of the Pennine Cycle Trail. Barbara’s logged that….

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Here’s the route.

The levelling up agenda’s naivety is illustrated today. Starting from north of Blackburn, taking in Bolton and Leigh, we enter the Cheshire plain and finish in Alderley Edge. Here a house seems to cost more than a street or two 50 miles north. The people aren’t better though, sheltering behind their gated drives.

A “bumpy” morning got the hills out of the way and offered great views of the plains below. On the horizon is the high rise of Manchester. Long gone are the tall chimneys that once would have marked out the mills.

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Belmont had an interesting modern interpretation of housing: the design mirrored the factory that had burned down where they now stand. The former Belmont bleaching and dyeing yard provides the employment, overseen by the happy pigs on the hillside.

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Lunch in a park which was part of the Howe Bridge colliery, built as a model village by the coal owners. The park is well tendered, the model village is not distinct. What is are the rows of back to back terraces which now become more common. And impressive civic buildings.

As we cycle south we cross some of the east west arteries: M62 M56, East lancs road, Transpennine trail and trail, Manchester Ship canal, etc. We skirt Manchester’s busier roads to take the quieter Cheshire ones. Today Cheshire is wearing its golden crop look, though the variety of Spring greens have taken on their homogenous summer standard green.

Here’s our happy meander.

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