Three members of Reading CTC did this last week. Here is the account of one of them, John Bennett -
As a result of ‘pub talk’ at the end of a Wednesday night CTC ride, myself, Ian and Nick organised a ride from Reading to Cumbernauld from 15-17 May 2013. Our itinerary was to be Reading to Knutsford (162m) on day 1, Knutsford to Gretna (141m) on day 2 and Gretna to Cumbernauld (93m) on the last day.
What should have been a wind assisted route on day 1 (based on numerous weather forecasts) turned out to be anything but. Our route was to take us through Oxford, Banbury, Coventry, Lichfield, Stone and Newcastle to Knutsford. We started in dry, but overcast and cold, conditions with a south-westerly wind for company, giving us a little assistance. However, once past Oxford this turned first more westerly, and then northerly as the day went on making it more of a headwind for the remainder of the day - about 130 miles. This certainly did not help when negotiating the rolling countryside of Oxfordshire prior to our mid-morning stop at Foodie's in Deddington. We then had to negotiate the delights of Coventry city centre and more rolling countryside in Warwickshire to get to our lunch stop at the Gate Inn in Nether Whitacre. Finally we crossed Staffordshire to take us to our last stop at Costa in Stone. Thankfully we now just had to cross the Cheshire plain at the end of the day. Having set out at 06:45 we finally arrived into Knutsford at 21:25 – a hearty Italian meal and a couple of drinks before checking into the Travelodge.
Day 2 started promisingly with a light tail wind but a gear cable failure on the outskirts of Wigan gave us (well Nick, anyway) some cause for concern until we discovered there was a Halfords about 500 yards down the road. 15 minutes later the offending cable was replaced and we were once again on our way. Second breakfast was taken at Booths in Fulwood, just north of Preston, and from there we continued without incident to our lunch stop at the Shakespeare in Kendal. From here we set out for the A6 over Shap Summit in somewhat drizzly conditions, but halfway up the climb over Shap the rain started to fall more heavily and the descent was further compromised by another cross-cum-head wind to Penrith, where the heavens really opened. Timely refuge in the form of a KFC appeared through the rain and we opted to take our mid afternoon stop at this point...where we toyed with the idea of a ‘family feast’ but ended up settling for less.....but still managed to over-order and ate too much, although this avoided the need for an evening meal later. When the rain eventually eased we were able to complete the rest of the day's riding in pseudo-dry, but still windy conditions, rolling over the hills to Carlisle and finally arriving into Gretna at 21:45, having set off at 07:45. A couple of pints of liquid calories put energy in the bank for the next day and aided a good night’s sleep.
Our final day's ride was planned as a 3 stage run via Beattock, Lanark and finally on to Cumbernauld. Having a bit of a lay in and a big cooked breakfast we left the overnight stop at 08:45 and decided to make a brief shop-stop in Lockerbie. This allowed us to continue on to Abington, where we had a late lunch stop after climbing Beattock Summit in the Southern Uplands. Once again the best laid plans were altered somewhat as Nick had plotted a different route via Motherwell, rather than Lanark, so we opted to follow that instead. While not adding any additional distance (that we noticed) it meant we had a fairly meandering route from Motherwell to our destination. However, we successfully negotiated this unplanned detour to finally arrive into Cumbernauld at 17:35 on Friday evening, where we were greeted by Liz (Ian's mum), Jeanette, Andy (Ian's brother) and David (Ian's nephew), complete with a bottle of champagne. Needless to say, the day concluded with a few beers at a couple of selected watering holes in Glasgow.
Our final totals (from Garmin Connect) show that we covered a total distance of 395.4 miles at an average speed of 13.6 mph with just under 11,000 ft of climbing.
I expect to see all three (& Jeanette, who drove them home) on the Reading CTC Wednesday evening ride tonight.
