The Brisk group was thin on the ground again today at Meadow Lea - just Ivan, John W and myself. We set off in sunshine bound for Manley then upwards over the hills to Kingsley. Here, I learnt via Wiki, that one famous local was Paula Radcliffe! Off to the Weaver Navigation, the path is a bit muddy but OK. At the lock transfer, Ivan becomes engaged in conversation with some silver walkers i.e. older than us! There is a massive tracked crane in the Weaver sitting on a large metal raft and more hardware up by the swing bridge, so maybe the rotting boats and barges are going to be removed at last.
Comberbatch comes and goes as does Antrobus, until we arrive at the Tabley Interchange at J19 of the M6. We fly over the M6 via the farmer’s bridge to take Moss Lane. This has to be the worst “surfaced" road in Cheshire as we bump away along it. We now run down along side Tatton Park and into Knutsford proper. I had selected Booth’s Supermarket cafe for luncheon and it didn’t disappoint on price, quality or quantity.
The route home is south out of Knutsford down the quiet Sudlow, Pinfold and Back Lanes before turning west to Lach Dennis and into Davenham. Here on Tuesday, I nearly become a cyclist sandwich between a parked car and a moving car which had overtaken me extremely closely. The elderly lady driver had no idea what she had done when I caught up with her a little further up the road.
We exit Davenham via Moulton and via the gravel track down under the railway and over the Weaver Navigation. Here at the locks, there are “fishermen” using strong magnets on lines to drag the canal to ensnare metal artefacts - strange hobbies these days! Up the road we take the Whitegate Way and stop at the community cafe for a well-deserved Magnum ice cream.
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| Real fishermen! |
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| Weaver Locks |
Whitegate Way
In and out of Little Budworth and Cotebrook, we then take the very familiar route back to Christleton via Utkinton. At Duddon, we notice a farmer flailing the hedge. In Christleton, I notice John’s back tyre is looking decided flat. A massive thorn is extracted from the tubeless tyre and John plugs it and re-flates and off we go again. However at the other side of Christleton, the tyre is slowly deflating once more. Upon inspection there was a tiny hole in the side wall where the large thorn had been extracted. Luckily, the tubeless sealant was persuaded to do its magic and get John home with unfortunately now a useless £40+ tyre.
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| The culprit cf to a Garmin |
Once again my thanks to John and Ivan for dragging me around the official 59 miler which turned out to be exactly 70 miles when I got home.
CA
Photos JW and ID
at Weaver locks the walkers were my neighboursđ
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