Cow poo and nice views.

The plan was to get home early from work and then head out for a couple of hours on the bike…good plan apart from the fact that a rain storm followed me north from South Staffs. I think we must have had about 5mm of rain in 30 minutes… not good cycling weather!
Anyway, a quick change of plan and lets have tea first before heading out between 6 and 8pm….so that’s what I did after printing off a map…which I promptly left on the printer! I did return for it (only got to the end of the road) only to find later that it was useless!

Well, the plan was to take the disused railway line to Gnosal and then do a quick lap around the country lanes there abouts…well on the way to the disused railway line, I OVERTOOK SOMEONE ON A BIKE!!!!! And then, a mile later on the track I over took someone else!!!! Two in one day!!!!!

I was however quickly brought back to earth a few miles later on where the path is crossed by a farm track. The barriers were up as the farmer was moving the cattle back into the fields meaning that I had to work around them…. Through a large amount of cow poo…. Not nice!

Well, to Gnosal and up Whalf Road…. A couple of months ago I used to love this road coming the other way as it was such a slope…. What slope? Climbing it was no bother! Once over the canal, the road does ramp up but I got to the top of the slope without stopping. I did stop at the top however as the road I wanted to take was shown as a dead end….as was the next street. Sigh. So not wanting to be cycling in the dark (its getting dark early now), I turned around and headed home.

Oh, one nice thing to say was from the top of the hill outside Gnosal I could see both the Wrekin and the tower on Cannock Chase. An impressive view.


http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=17352

So: 18.84 miles at an average of 11.4mph. A bit disappointed with the average but then I suppose about 4 miles of that was off road on a path which my bike really isn’t suitable for.
Total for the month: 177.48. To do 72.52 miles…..5 days left in the month… might make it with an epic ride over the weekend…weather permitting.