Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay!!!!
YAY!!!The tandem is here! And it's in brilliant condition. A real bargain I feel!
Maffie came in the end. We left Birkenshaw near Bradford having collected the Tandem at gone eleven in the Morning. It took us a couple of hours to get to Halifax
. We did use the time well though, conquering Maffie's fear of the speed accrued going down hill, adjusting things for comfort and tweaking gears for better shifting. We wobbled. A lot to begin with but quickly improved. Some improvement yet to be made too I feel. We also made a few false starts and discovered the difficulty of a hill start!!!
Once in Halifax, I dropped Maffie at the train station as her chest infection was starting to rear itself again and set off on my tod Towards Manchester on the A58, A672 and then A62.
Hmmm, past Rippondon things started getting very hilly. In fact, until I reached Saddleworth, just past the M62, it was just up, up and up. Relentlessly so. I certainly felt I was dragging that bike along, with it's loaded rack! (Maffie had thoughfully bought me an extra 2 litres of water to take with me... the sentement was appreciated but the bottle is still unopened!).
Never the less, Oldham came and the hills did relent. Weeeeeeeeeeeee all the way into Manchester. At least until I got as far as the A62. Or should that be A62(M) as bicycles, horses and pedestrians are explicitly banned from using this. Only, there is no advanced warning and the sign depicting the prohibitions is several yards along the road, so I ended up walking with the tandem against the flow of traffic towards a busy roundabout which had a blind corner to the right in the direction I was walking in. With barriers either side of the carriageway, there was nothing else I could do.
I picked Maffie up from Victoria station in the City Centre and we headed home along the Oxford Road, Europe's busiest bus corridor.
I think we handled ourselves quite well in the city traffic. And due to a fair in one of the parks, it was quite busy.
I'm now totally exhausted, but it was lovely to see the scenary along Saddleworth Moor, riding under a warm autumn sun.
Tandem pictures to follow when I've had time to take some.