Today we went cycling to Rivington (which we affectionatly call Rivendell). It started off well, if a little late as Glyn decided that I now lived in westbrook so he went to the westbrook asda instead of the birchwood one. Jerry was already at rivington as glyn arrived at Birchwood.
Tom Tom, the wonderful GPS system I have, decided that instead of taking us along roads to our carpark, it’d use the public bridalways … that was certainly different. Anyway, we found the carpark and met up with Jerry.
Off we went, cycling away. It was all going well we had done a few miles and then Jerry kept “forgetting” to tell us about the next hill we had to climb, and the next one, and the next one. Finally Jerry said that when we got past these trees on the hill it would be downhill all the way. He Lied. He Lied.
Another hard slog uphill, this was the last hill, and it lasted for about 20 minutes and myself and graeme pushed our bikes up some of it (although we did try and cycle it first). Glyn also was beaten as we neared the top and he also pushed his bike. Jerry the man-machine just kept on cycling. Dissention among the ranks formed, we considered killing jerry and riding his corpse down the hill like a toboggon, while all three of us agreed it was a plan with merits, none of us had any energy to do any such thing.
We got to the top, and it got easier, much easier. I found I could just now pedal and pedal, quite a strange feeling, I felt as long as I didn’t stop I could keep going forever. Then we got to the downhill. Jerry and Glyn sodded off, Graeme’s chain came off so I went back to help him. On starting again we came to a junction with two paths to take and we had no idea which one was which (as the other two had petled down). Sods law we chose the wrong one, went down go to the gate, realised our mistake and came back.
The downhill section is like the downhill bit in ladybower just before the halfway point, only rockier, steeper and scarier. I took it as fast as I could but it wasn’t very fast, my arms and legs ached from the constant buffeting they received.
Jerry went off to meet his wife and kidlets, we all decided to just call it a day and go home. I remember thinking that the bolton match was about to finish so we want to avoid the reebok stadium area as much as possible, Tom Tom however, decided that instead of avoiding it, it took us straight to it. We sat stationary for 10 minutes as streams of bolton fans passed us, I was in my liverpool shirt so I got a few dodgy looks. Pesky tom tom.
Couldn’t be bothered cleaning my bike today, i’ll clean it tomorrow when I get back from work.
Cycle-o-tron details for today.
Distance: 10.3 miles
Time: 1:27:31 actual pedalling time (some pushing)
Average: 7.0 mph
Maximum: 33 mph (fun fun .. I should have pedalled)
Total distance this weekend, 28.8 miles.
