I feel I had better elaborate on some of the details of this ride because I only had time for the quickest post ever last night before the forum went down for an upgrade.....
As with many of my rides, this was a spur-of-the-moment, very last minute thing as I suddenly found I was faced with some free time. It wasn't unlimited though and after dropping the youngest lad off at school I had a deadline, be back by 3pm to pick him up again.
By the time I had returned home to plan a route and get my shoot together I found myself starting the ride at 10.15 with a stupid target ride loaded to the Garmin.
The plan was to do just a little over 50 miles, taking in some big hills, on the hottest day of the year, against the clock. What could possibly go wrong?
I haven't any pictures to break up my description so will try to be brief. The first lumps at about 3-4 miles is Hartshead Pike, a mere pimple on the landscape for experienced local riders (
@dan_bo ). Then the next, slightly higher summit is Scouthead above Oldham before dropping to Denshaw for a slog over the top (at 12 miles) into Newhey & Milnrow. A gentle potter around to Hollingworth lake saw me take a minor wrong turn and I had to retrace my steps to get onto the lakeside path so I could ride around to the Pavilion Café and sit on a bench outside for some cake and a coffee.
At this point I had to decide whether to continue or cut short the planned route. I had exactly 3hrs to do the remaining 33miles if I allowed my deadline to be the 3.10pm chucking out time at the school. Not normally a worry for me to average 11mph but this didn't allow for any mechanicals, navigational errors, the heat or the hills, and I didn't know many of the roads I would be riding!
Of course I decided to go for it and was soon churning my way up Blackstone Edge in the sweltering heat
The climb was rewarded with an enjoyable fast descent from Cragg Vale into Sowerby Bridge. Sowerby Bridge really was the low point of the ride, literally. From here it was 7.5 miles of continuous climbing to reach Buckstones, high up on the moors above the M62. The climb from Sowerby was STEEP and due to a minor navigation slip I missed a turn that should have taken me up a slightly less vertical part of NCN68 with parts of the climb at 16.5%.
I ended up climbing Scar Head Rd which according to my mapping tops out at over 22% in places although I am proud to admit, I was still feeling good and didn't notice it was so steep. Once at Buckstones and doing the mental arithmetic of distance against ETA I knew I had smashed it, all that remained was a fantastic descent into Denshaw (a head wind took the speed off it, but it was nice and cooling), a stop off in Delph to buy water at the Co-op, before the final little climb past Hartshead Pike. I arrived at my son's school with 15 minutes spare
I am a little tender on top today because despite applying lashings of P20 suncream before the ride and letting it soak in I think I sweated most of it off so have a slightly pink pate and forearms, and in case anyone saw me and wonders who it was, I was wearing my Cyclechat cycle shirt and riding my black GT road bike
