A rather lovely ride out to Blackburn via Tottington, Holcombe Village (quite a pull to get up there), Helmshore, Haslingden and Accrington.
After a quick tour around the Haslingden streets that I grew up on (parents couldn't afford a house. Ba-doom tish), we stopped for lunch at Cissy Green's bakery on Haslingden high street (it's actually called Higher, and Lower, Deardengate). I had meat pie and mushy peas. My Glaswegian friend decided that he'd do without the peas. We ate them sat on a bench in lovely sunshine then cycled about 1/2 mile to the Griffin Inn, home of the Rossendale Brewery where I had two 1/2s, one of Rossendale bitter, one of Halo bitter.
Once we reached Blackburn, we caught the train to Entwistle (OT: Blackburn Station. Why oh why is the ticket office on platform 2 ? Why not put it at the main entrance to save us all having to walk up a slippery ramp to buy the tickets and then back down again to find our platform ?).
Leaving Entwistle, we resisted the siren call of the Strawberry Duck and headed back to Manchester via Tottington and Radcliffe. We had a lovely whizz down into Tottington
.
We stopped in MCR for a beer at The Knott (a pint of Ginger Marble, for a change
).
In all we did 55 miles in chilly but gloriously sunny weather.
I was on new bike again and it's still fantastic to ride. I'd pumped the tyres up on Tuesday night so the ride was a little harsher but still very acceptable. It didn't feel any faster though.........
It was also surprisingly controllable on the bits of off-road that we did. There seems to be something pathetically heroic about riding a skinny tyred bike through gravel and mud. Or is that just me ?
The only time today that I've considered my knees was when I read Kim's post. So that's a good thing
