# Never Let Calibanzwei hold the map...



## Melonfish (20 Jun 2011)

First overnighter on the new Hybrids, me and col set off from Warrington about lunch time on the Saturday, the aim was to hit delamere with a stop in norley on the way to check in on some volunteering friends. the plan was to take it nice and easy and not kill ourselves what with our panniers being full and the cars passing at mach 3.

anyhoo nice simple route to begin with, took the a49 out of Warr' town centre, of course once you get past stockton heath it starts to climb for a good few miles, and continues to do so! granny gear was in fact used a number of times lol.

anyway worst of the climbing over we followed the 49 until we got over the river weaver and then turned off into some more rural area's came across the mother of all hills and i had to push my bike up the last bit it was brutal! (who the hell said cheshire was flat?)
meandered through some country lanes, now i'd given col the map at our last stop (after getting off the 49) because he had a spare pocket for it. this imo turned out to be a mistake as even with a map he is at the best of times directionally challenged..
a few more miles then intended later we arrive at norley, there's no one at the vol site to say hi to so we went to the tigers head pub and had a pint of Oyster Stout (flippin lovely) and chilled for a little bit. so far so good. clocked about 13 miles so far and in good time we'd got here very quick. so we went meandering through this part of cheshire mooching at the woodlands etc. the general plan was to end up near the abbey arms in a roundabout fashion, this was most definitely achieved, after getting lost a couple of times and free wheeling down this epic hill (33mph reached ) we finally pedalled into the abbey arms for a well earned pint and some food.
mileage on the clock now? 26! we'd doubled our mileage without even realising.
slapup meal and a pint of green king cask later we decided to off to our camp site and managed to get there just as the heavens opened.
all day it had been cloudy threatening rain, wasn't until we were within 50 yards of our spot that we got the full days worth in one massive shower!
darted under some larch tree's and setup the tarp. bikes locked together and covered with tarp #2 then rolled out the bivi's under the main tarp and settled in. not a bad night tbh. the larch tree's kept all the rain off, and some brandy for me and vodka for col kept us warm. also watching a couple of ep's of bobs burgers on cols phone was fun too.

Sunday morning bright and early (8 o clock lol) up and breakfast. scrambled eggs for me, also a bagel with cream cheese.
technically i was going for mini omlette on my honey stove/zebra billy combo but i think i had too much heat on it so i had to keep mixing so ended up with scrambly eggs instead of an omlette.
anyhoo col decided to do his (saus + egg was it col?) had a bagel and then decided to do some sausages so we had some of those too. we woke hungry!
couple of cups of MSC3k (Mystery Science Coffee three thousand) later and we'd packed up without a trace and were ready to hit the road.
out the wood, parked up and set about stretching, because honestly after the day before i was a bit sore. not a huge mileage for some but i've never cycled that far before.
this time the route was simple, we shot through delamere and stopped at hatchmere for a brief look on the water and a listed to the clamour of the birds then kept going towards frodsham. stopped just outside to have a coffee at a little place (hmmm caffeine) and then went for the speed run into frodsham. its all down hill from a few miles out so we were hoping to break yesterdays 33mph record.
sadly a monster headwind foiled our plans! (curse you headwind)
so we got into frodsham, then headed along the 56 back to warrington. it ambles relatively flat along this stretch and was actually quite scenic to boot.
made it back into Warrington for 12 on the dot and dropped outside the pub just as it opened for a pint of bulmers and a sit down.
then ambled home to see the loving family (sorry arguing family) hehe
48.5 miles total round trip. my legs are tired and sore BUT i've got the bug, i want to do that again!

this time i'm keeping hold of the map


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