Another good turnout at the Cafe in Hawarden despite the thermometer reporting a cool 2 degrees Celsius. The brisk group replete with Buckets & Spades were enroute to Prestatyn, we trust you had a nice day gents.
The mod group consisting of ride leader Alan, Trevor, Dave & Liz , Dave H Steve T, Steve Hu and Andy. Clearly Andy isn’t finding riding a 20kgs bike heavy enough so today he arrived complete with panniers. I suspect he is trying to outdo Roy (lets do a 90 miler with bricks in my panniers) Forster.
The mod group plunged down Gladstone Way and used Alan's cunning route to ride over the A55 roundabout and get on the Shotton road. At this point instead of “Where’s Wally “ it was where’s the tandem! A full five mins later Dave & Liz appeared , the combination of bollards tight turns and steep inclines had hampered progress some what.
All back together again the group made their way along the river and towards the Toyota Park. At this point Alan regaled the group with his tree planting and Willow felling expertise. Sustrans have adopted a large triangle packet of land and are replanting native trees and controlling the woodland from the fast growing Willow.
The route then meandered until we approached Dunkirk on the Shotwick road. We now navigated numerous road closed signs and observed the busiest folk this week, are tree surgeons. Looking at the damage the Wirral took a real pounding by storm Arwen. A brief stop at Raby Mere then the route took us past Brackenwood golf course and descended from Storeton hill towards Brimstage through another road closed sign.
A fellow cyclist coming the other way advised the road was impassable, clearly he was not aware of Dave ( Indiana Jones) Heath's ability to cross roads. The underpass ( pictured) turned out to be a bit more of a challenge. Liz made a management decision and whilst 7 men debated if we could get across with a low engined Tandem , she was 400 m down the road going back the way we had come!
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| Photo by AO |
Suffice to say Liz’s decision was the right one and we braved the M53 roundabout to eventually arrive at out lunch stop the Mouse Inn in Brimstage. However the Mouse lived up to its name and was deemed too cosy for a Covid distanced lunch for eight of us. So we dropped into the Courtyard Coffee shop which provided a lovely fare for our hungry stomachs.
Replete with Sausage Panninis and Cheese sandwiches plus 10 litres of tea we set off for Parkgate, the temperature had now dipped to three degrees and it had started to rain. Road captain Alan made a quick decision to re route us through Thornton Hough and Willaston. Another plunge to Burton brought us out by the marshes.
From here various members started to peel off leaving the committed to ascend the 300 feet back to Hawarden just as the drizzle started to get serious.
Thanks to Alan for scoping out and leading the route.
See route map and/or gpx file download
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