UK Day 5: 57 Miles

Nantwich, England to Chorley, England

I had an enjoyable night in Nantwich, with highlights including a great Mediterranean restaurant and a craft beer pub. After a good night’s sleep, I started my day with a latte and a pistachio croissant. The plan was to pack up quickly and get on the road.

Then, near disaster struck. As I was about to leave, I went to turn on my headphones, but they were nowhere to be found. After backtracking through the hotel and searching all my bags, I finally discovered them buried in my things and was able to start my day. I wouldn’t have made it through the rest of the trip without some background tunes for my rides.

I began the ride wearing my jacket but quickly warmed up, took it off, and enjoyed some sunshine. The scenery was similar to the past couple of days. It reminded me of riding in Pennsylvania when I was at Bucknell, with lots of rolling hills and farms.

After about 20 miles, I passed an Aldi in the town of Northwich and decided to pick up some food for lunch. A couple of miles later, I found myself on the first of many bike trails for the day. The trails were nice, often paved, but occasionally switching to gravel or dirt. My bike’s tires are brand new and a bit skinnier than my previous ones, but they handled the unpaved sections just fine.

I seemed to be riding alongside a series of canals with locks that allow boats to move upstream. The terrain was generally flat, though I was gradually climbing with the locks.

With 25 miles to go, I stopped at a bench along the trail for a break and ate my lunch. The ride felt great today; much easier than the previous two days. Everything was going smoothly until I was about five miles from my destination. The bike trail deteriorated from gravel to dirt to thick mud, making it nearly impossible to ride. I decided to reroute and ended up carrying my bike up some steep steps to get back to the road.

I’m a little concerned about Garmin’s ability to provide accurate elevation profiles for this trip. Today’s route was supposed to have 1,000 feet of elevation gain but ended up being almost 2,000. Being off by nearly 100% doesn’t inspire much confidence for some of the bigger climbing days I have planned.

I arrived at the hotel just before 3:00. I’m a bit outside the main town, but there’s a pub right next door for dinner. I may skip the walk into town tonight and just enjoy a relaxing evening close by. Tomorrow, I’ll continue north.