Posted in Cycling, Bike rides
Tagged with: bike, ride, manchester, salford, blackrod, winter, hill
Yesterday was my first big ride since the launch of Angry Cyclist - in fact, it's probably been the first long ride for a while, what with work commitments and all.
We ended up at Winter Hill, one of the highest peaks on the western Pennines, and a great cycle route - if you're not riding a road bike.
It turned into more of a hike than a ride, but the views from the top were impressive - I'll post more photos in the second part. For now though, I'll give you a run down of the part that involved most cycling, my journey from South Manchester to Blackrod.
I set off with considerable aplomb northwards on Princess Parkway, making good time on the quiet major road. Some of the routes through Manchester can be quite nasty at times, but the wide multiple lanes and quiet Tuesday afternoon traffic made my life easier. I got stuck in a jam on Deansgate, but this gave me a bit of a breather and let me work out the best route to the next stage of my journey, Salford.
Getting to Salford was relatively trivial - it was well signposted, so I found the A6 quite easily. What I didn't expect, however, is just how bad the A6 could be.
As soon as you get out of the city, the A6 turns into a 50mph, 3 lane nightmare - all but a motorway, basically. With the strongest headwind I've encountered for a while, two lanes of traffic merging from the left isn't a pleasant experience. I decided to forego the direct A6 route as soon as I could get off it - which was some time after I actually wanted to.
I eventually managed to get onto a road that ran parallel to the A6 in north Salford, and provided a much more sedate cycling experience - I remember why I don't cycle round Manchester much!
The remainder of the journey to Swinton was spent traversing via subways and pedestrian routes - anything to steer clear of the increasingly busy motorway run-off on the A6. By the time I got to Swinton, however, most of the A6 traffic had branched onto the motorway so it was safe to travel onto the now-sedentary A6 for the remainder of my journey.
Despite the traffic slowing down on this section, the headwind had picked up, now that I had escaped the shelter of the city, and with a slow climb out of the Irwell valley. The trip through the remainder of Swinton and Walkden was fairly uneventful, typical Lancastrian town cycling experiences.
After that, there was a tirade of towns with 'Hulton' in - Little Hulton, Over Hulton, Westhougton, Wingates - all the while the headwind picking up speed as I gained altitude and lost shelter.
By the time I got to Wingates I was knackered already - but I pressed on to meet my cycling buddy at Blackrod station for 5pm. It was slow progress, but I eventually covered the 25-30 miles (with only a couple of detours) in a pitiful 2 hours 40 minutes (11mph!).
We took a brief break in Blackrod, before heading towards the even hillier Rivington. Here's a photo of the Blackrod A6 junction:
Dull photo, I know - there are far better to follow in the second part. You can see Winter Hill in the background, though - we were to climb to one of the summits.
