Birmingham to Stafford.

As you might know, I have set myself the target of “doing” Birmingham to Stafford this month after falling short of such a ride a couple of weeks ago due to rain. Well, as the weather was okay yesterday, I decided that I didn't have any good reason not to!

So, the ride...well, I got to the Station in plenty of time but forgot to go to the cash machine...something I regretted later and got on the 6.41am: blimey, the train manager was chatty! She thought it was funny that someone would get the train into Birmingham and then cycle back. I told her that if she saw me at a station trying to get the train back after bottling it, she should refuse to allow me onto the train.

Humm... they have spent quite a bit of money around Gas St Basin and it was full of boats, strangely though, I didnt actually see any sailing along until just before Wolverhampton! It was a bright and sunny day, which was nice, although the wind did pick up later. I made reasonable progress making it to Wolverhampton (15 miles) in about 2 hours.

Wolverhampton...ah....shit hole. I had two incidents of note whilst pending through. Firstly, there are some new flats built right by the canal which had they been in London would be worth £400-£500K each but in Wolverhampton, they were built and owned by a Housing Association. Sooooo, they were full of twats including the group of morons who thought it was funny to shout abuse at me. When I ignored them, they decided it would be funny to throw a bottle of pop at me, which missed but didn't please me somewhat! Tosser. I could rant here about bringing back National Service but wont bother.

Then, after a couple of texts I was cycling through a Oxley Park...the canal doesnt have a path at this stage so you use the parks path...when I came up behind an old bloke. Now rather than asking him to step aside, I decided it was better if I went around him....mistake!!!! I did not notice that the grass was very waterlogged and hit a puddle of mud at around 10mph.... over the top I went landing heavily in the mud. The old bloke came up to check if I was okay: which I was, and then said how polite I had been to try to go around him and how sorry he was that I had fallen off. He did agree with me however, that it must have looked funny this fat bloke flying through the air.

I was quite happy when I got off the canal path as its a bit claggy and difficult to roll. Once back on tarmac I made good time to Penkridge where I thought I would stop and get a quick sandwich but...sigh, the towns cash machine wasn't working!!!

Well, the last five miles should have been a struggle but to be honest, I didn't really notice them and made the final “climb” into Stafford without a problem. So, 30.1 miles (and no, I didn't add the 0.1miles just to make it look even more impressive!) in just over 4 hours. (forgot to add, the cycle to the station, so that's 31. 6 miles!!!)

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=13000