Day 6 Kendal to Whitchurch 130 miles

This day was always going to be one of the least pleasant. We left the beauty of the lake district to grind down through a mass of link roads, dual carrage-ways and city centres. We charged through Lancaster making our 1st planned stop in Garstang. Both Nick and Dave had Achilles problems at this stage and a visit to the chemist came up trumps.

The Brufen gel in particular helped stopped the pathetic whingeing from the older JoGLERS.

The ride then continued to Preston where we had our 1st real problem with inconsiderate driving. A bus Driver sat on our wheel trying to pass where it was not possible, resorting to honking his horn to try to intimidate us out of the way. He then over took and cut in dangerously close to Nick. We politely gestured to him that maybe he could have handled himself better and continued on south.

We arrived in the out skirts of Warrington after about 80 miles and then stopped at a Harvester in the middle of some road works for soup and a roll. As you can see we were already feeling jaded with the misery that is this part of the world on a bike.

We then took a detour around Runcorn as suggested in a JOGLE guidebook somewhere. This was not a better decison and we soon wished we had just blasted down the A49 to our destination. Runcorn is literally surrounded by a bike unfriendly dual carriageway so we decided to cut through the middle on the Spur Road. Unfortunately we had trouble locating it. After 30 mins faffing about we managed to use the GPS on Nicks phone to put us straight and allow us to escape the delightful place that is Runcorn.

Then it was a blast down the A533 to join the A49. We were relieved to find the A49 because this should take us down to our destination in Whitchurch. GPS batteries were dead by this time so It was a case of heads down, bums up and ride like the wind. We were really flying too at this stage chain ganging like pro’s and averaging 19mph+. Not bad for tubby middle aged guys. Unfortunately we were so into blasting home and imagining the food awaiting us that we didn’t notice the A49 was now the A51 and we were heading in the wrong direction. Doh!

We finally realised our error with 118 miles clocked up. Day light was fading fast and we had 12 miles still to go to get us to where we should already be. Suddenly there was no conversation just the sound of hard breathing and pedalling as we mashed the pedals desperatley to get to the B+B. Fortunately it was worth the effort. A mighty fine B+B owner stood in the road to welcome us and finish our longest day yet.

Stats:

130 miles

13hrs start to finish

Average moving speed 13.6mph

Route before GPS battery went flat is here.

Google and other problems defeated!

If you have been following us intrepid JOGLER’s you may have noticed first our Blog disapear and then a total lack of updates.

Unfortunately Google made a false positive on our site as a spam blog on the day we left. This has certainly cost us sponsorship money for the Alzheimer’s Society as we had most people, including the papers and TV pointed to the Blogger blog. We would not have been able to sort this out at all if Not for Steve “The Engine” Evans who setup this WordPress blog for us before towing us through the wilds of Scotland. Thanks Steve!

As for updates we have not had access to a mobile signal or to be honest time to do anything other than ride eat and sleep. and eat, and er… eat.

Dr Steve has left us now to resume his respectable life in Scotland but will try to update the blog with tales of his adventures with us through Scotland.