So according to caloriecounter.com 65 miles divided by 6 and a half hours cycling time = 10 miles per hour = 300 calories per hour burned = 1950 calories burned overall = 1 large portion of chilli con carne, 3 slices of garlic bread, 2 large glasses of wine and 6 squares of cadburys fruit and nut, thats exactly what I tucked into when I got home at 9.30 last night! I have it on good authority Sally's cuisine delight was chips, fried egg and a cocktail of beer and red wine!
And just for the record, my buttocks are still looking very good, the dimples and cellulite have diminished and the legs are toned AND tanned as I'm now in lycra cycling shorts, infact since last blogging I also have myself a new bike - a Claude Butler trail bike with 3 cogs and 24 gears, so you see I'm a real cyclist now!
Anyway onto our journey yesterday. We got a real good start arriving at Whitchurch at 10.10 and were away in the saddle and pedalling by 10.30, that in itself was a record, as we've never been good at early starts.
The first 15 miles, which took us about 1 hour 20 minutes, were fairly easy with gentle rolling terrain. The weather was also being kind to us with a mix of sunshine, cloud and a bit of a cooling breeze. The countryside was looking lush and green, I expect due to the hard winter we've had and the lanes were nice and quiet too with just the odd tractor here and there, no bin men, so all in all very pleasant, but as usual all good things must to come to an end and we spent the next 45 minutes climbing up 2 huge hills at Harthill and Burwardsley - dropped right down to 2 miles per hour and in 'granny' gear, cog one, gear one, it was hard going, but we took our time and I just kept thinking of those hips and thighs. Of course if you go up a hill you have to come back down and it was fantastic cruising down other side clocking up 27 miles per hour, we were nearly speeding!!
We came to the small village of Tattenhall, well worth a visit with a few shops, pubs and eating places and in the area just a couple of miles away I noticed there was and ice cream farm and parlour. At this point I would have loved a big dollup of ice cream, but there was no time for stopping, we were on a mission and Chester was in our sight. Thankfully the last 10 miles were flat and the last 4 into Chester were on the canal tow path. 3 hours exactly to get into the centre of Chester.
Chester is a beautiful walled city. It has everything for everyone, shops, bars, restaurants, cathedral, roman ruins, racecourse.......the list is endless, its one of my favourite places and one I'm very familiar with as in our boating days we used to moor our boat just 30 minutes from the city so Chester was a regular saturday morning visit for us.
So with bikes securely locked up Sally and I went in search of food and drink to a little cafe on one of the upper board walks and were lucky to get a table on the balcony over looking the main street. I went to this cafe about 18 months ago with friends and the weather was different then as it was winter and we had teacakes and hot chocolate, but we were now enjoying egg sandwiches, paninis, latte and earl grey, and taking in the atmosphere, we even ordered a couple of extra latte's to fill our coffee flask up for the return journey.
After a very welcome break we headed back to the tow path as we had'nt quite got to the end of the route, there was another mile to go! The end of the route is marked with a small cast iron figure of a Mercian Warrior, this is because part of the route 45, the 101 miles between Chester and Bewdley is also known as the Mercian Way, so although we'd got to Chester it was important to see the little warrior!
Chester from the cafe balcony
Chester Cathedral
A favourite mooring spot of ours when we had a boat
The small village of Tattenhall
The road lift bridge over the canal at Wrenbury, about 5 miles north of Whitchurch, we had to stop here on our journey north as the bridge was up in favour of a passing boat.
Our return journey from Chester to Whitchurch was equally as good as our outward bound one, making good time, the only difference being the earlier cooling breeze had turned into fairly gusty head winds. It just meant we had to padal a bit harder!!!!!
Here goes, onto tennis now!!
