Diary - Day 9

This may have been the warmest day of the trip, not that it was boiling or anything but it was warm enough. Before we even started cycling we went to Spire Brewery in Chesterfield and met David McClaren along with a few members of the local CAMRA who were helping brew a special beer for an upcoming beer festival.

The picture above shows conclusively that something is happening in there, but it is difficult to discern exactly what.

We left Spire brewery and then said goodbye to my parents as we returned to Blackwell. It was already mid-afternoon and we had plenty of miles to do, our first task being to locate the Pennine Bridleway. Having done this our next task was to get off it. It was always going to be a bit of a gamble, I knew it would be difficult but with time ticking by and nightmarish climb followed by similar descents along with far too much weight on the bikes we only managed about 6 miles along the trail. There were some great views to be had though and I will return with nobbly tyres and no panniers at some point soon.

The only option was to follow the main roads into the Mancester conurbation and too fight our way through Stalybridge, Moseley and the like towards our destination of Littlebrough. This was not a great deal of fun and it was made worse by Sam's constant verbals, complaining about pretty much everything under the general heading of 'the north'. While his mouth went into overdrive his legs pointedly refused to do likewise and my general tactic of dissapearing up the road when he started mouthing off was scuppered by the navigational and traffic difficulties on this stretch so a plod through the Sunday evening traffic of the Machester region in the heat was our lot for a couple of hours.

Eventually we made it to Milnrow and headed for Hollingworth lake near Littlebrough. It was after 8pm when we finally got in and set up camp in a field at the edge of the campsite having failed to find the attendant. Unfortunately he found us 20 minutes later as we were trying to get away for some food and we were told that we couldn't stay where we were. Apparently the field we were staying in was needed the next day, not that that was relevant as we were leaving the next morning and besides which the other family in the field were allowed to stay because they had kids! Moving a tent across a campsite to a place with crap ground and more midges was not going to help calm tempers, nor did the fact that it was 9pm by the time we finished and the pubs stopped serving food. Fortunately we found an Italian restaurant still open and had an excellent meal to finish the day.

Another midge attack getting into the tent gave us a taster of what was to come in West Scotland and we were glad to be through this day.

Day 9 review

mileage = 68