Day 5: Shrewsbury to Preston

Total: 89.1 miles
Time in saddle: Unknown
Average speed: Unknown
Maximum speed: Unknown
Cumulative: 417
Chafing rating: 2/5 (uh-oh)


I’ve been to the home of the Eckford Sweetpea. Apparently. That’s what the sign said just outside the village of Wem, but I don’t know if we saw one. We also went past Whitchurch, ‘Home of Clock Towers’. We didn’t see any of those either, as we were routed on the by-pass. It was that sort of day. Jen, the DiscoverAdventure Rep in charge, painted a rather gloomy (dare I say, grim) picture of the ride north, a day that promised more A-roads, many lorries and a lot of hard cycling.

I wanted an earlier finish today so I set off at the front with Colin, Vajrin, Sarah and Jo, who ride at a good but not lung-bursting pace, and don’t take too long at the breaks. It was a chilly, misty morning, the first time our feet have felt really cold. We started out on B-roads but soon hit the A49. Thank  goodness it was Saturday; something I had to be told, as I have lost all track of time. The trucks were not so frequent and the traffic seemed more relaxed. Then began several hours of metronomic cycling on a flat road. It was unremitting and introduced me to a new experience: riding 65 miles on the same road. This personal record is set to be beaten tomorrow when we ride 86 miles on the A6 through Cumbria to Carlisle.

The group I was with was a bit unforgiving in the morning whenever someone dropped back. I wasn’t happy about it. Philip, who had to call into a shop, was left behind. I turned round to see he had gone but I didn’t know why, and was told he could join another group. I needed two pit-stops (I drink a lot of water!) so I timed them for long straight roads that enabled me to see into the distance, as I too was left each time, and had to go full bore to catch them. On and on, on the same road we went, relentlessly but not unhappily. We really feel on these days, as we approach half way, that we are down to business. There are fewer wisecracks flying around and more head-down determination. I shared most of the ‘point’ work with Colin, an excellent rider, to keep the group moving at a reasonable pace, and like John in his group, went back into shepherding mode in towns. Many of the riders here have not ridden in cities before.

The constant whirr-whirr-whirr-whirr of the wheels set me thinking again about all sorts of things. I have thought about my father frequently on the last couple of rides. It almost felt like he was with me today. I could see his smile and hear his laugh. He would have been fascinated by this challenge. He would have thought I was quite mad and would have made frequent enquiries as to the state of my knees, but he would have loved talking about cyclists’ strategies for negotiating with traffic, about road positioning and about average speeds. I was thinking about my father when I first decided to do this ride, two months after he died, wanting to commit to doing something useful with my fitness having witnessed his being taken from him. I suspected these feelings might appear once the initial euphoria of the first few days had subsided, but I was taken aback at how strong they were, and found myself in floods of tears for several miles.

Jo, Sarah, me, Colin, Vajrin at the Wild Boar

At the first water stop, we saw the DiscoverAdventure banner but no stall and so pushed on to find a coffee shop. The late 19th-century, mock Tudor, Wild Boar Hotel looked like just the ticket. Outside we got talking to a man and woman, in their late forties, who asked us what we were doing. They then told us that inside the hotel is a plaque commemorating its first owners, the Naylor Brothers, John and Robert, who apparently completed the first recorded walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats in 1871, taking nine weeks to complete the journey. (My friend Alistair will read this and inform me they did it on a diet of gruel and small beer, in tweeds and plus fours, not lycra. And wearing monacles.) And then the man asked about the charities we are supporting. He told us he had just lost an uncle to skin cancer after a 10-week illness, that his brother had just been given 12 weeks to live with the same cancer, and that earlier this week, he had been diagnosed with the same.

Back on the road we were really feeling that we were now in the area the motorway signs refer to as THE NORTH, heading towards Warrington, and passing signs for Birmingham, Manchester and North Wales. Today we cycled through Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire. Lunch was in a sports hall just after Warrington. I rang my sister, Fiona, for a chat and heard the sound of the car engine in the background. “Where are you?” I asked. “About 5 miles from you.”

She had read yesterday’s blog in bed this morning, looked out of the window and thought, “I know, I’ll catch him and cheer him on.” It certainly cheered me up. But she had to work hard to catch us. She drove up from Stratford-on-Avon,  just missed the lunch stop,  just missed the afternoon water stop and finally tracked us as we made steady progress through the huge conurbation around Wigan.

Me, Colin, local boy Craig

We met up again at the Ibis Hotel in Preston and went and had nachos in the truly awful Phanton Winger pub. The first person Fiona got to meet in the Ibis was Tommy Tarmac, whose pratfalls she had been reading about that morning.

One of the quicker riders, Craig, who has featured in previous posts, is a local to Preston. He too had family waiting for him with a big banner proclaiming LEJOG2013. But first he took our group on a tour of the town, including a visit to the … er … bus depot. It is actually an extraordinary building.

Preston Bus Depot (cropped from a photo by Jo)

We also rode along a new cycleway beside the river and municipal gardens which was extremely calming after 4 hours on the A49.

Craig leads us through Preston

I have just re-read the above and realise it is not exactly packed with laughs, but I can assure you I am having the time of my life, my body is holding up well and I am enjoying being in the depths of a slightly crazy challenge. This ride takes me to places I have never been before, both physically and emotionally. I am loving it.

The riders were very spread out today but almost everyone is doing well. There was a huge amount of bonhomie around the dinner table, even in the ghastly Phantom Winger. I had ordered Pop-Poppity Chicken. I had no idea what it was but thought it might be grilled and spicy. It was chicken nuggets and potato wedges. So there you have it. Today I have been to Wem, home of the Eckford Sweetpea, Whitchurch, home of clock towers, and Preston, home of Pop-Poppity Chicken.