The day started cold, but bright sun soon emerged which made for warming conditions. There were a lot of Easy Riders in Cleopatra’s - more than I’d seen for a long time. Steve T had a ride to Loppington which found favour. Unfortunately, technical gremlins got in the way and he wasn’t able to load the route. Therefore my backup ride to Whittington became the mod’s route.
After our usual shambolic start, I found I had a group of 10: myself, Ray, Steve’s T and Hu, Alan, Trevor, Dave H, Matt and Andy, plus Clive who was only joining us for the start as he had another engagement later. We headed out following the lanes to the west of the Dee, through the remains of river flooding, even though the last heavy rains had been around two weeks previously. Arriving in Bangor on Dee, we took the lanes towards Cloy before heading back to the B-road to enter Overton. We continued southwards through Rhew and then down to cross the Welsh border and Shell Brook via a very steep and very rough disintegrating road. Further poor surfaces and hilly lanes took us by Dudleston Hall and past the now closed Jack Mytton pub into Hindford. We turned right here onto a lane we knew to be often thick with mud, but the lack of recent rain meant that it was just very very rough.
We joined the B-road to arrive in Whittington with it’s fine castle, which is the site of an annual historical re-enactment by Historia Normannis (https://normannis.co.uk/wp/). The village also has two pubs. We’d previously visited and enjoyed Ye Old Boote Inn, but today we made for the White Lion. As is necessary these days, I’d previously checked them both out on the web to see if they were open and to look a their menus. Both were open, but the White Lion offered more reasonable prices for light bites starting at £7.50.
 |
| Photo by Ray/Alan |
The White Lion happily accommodated nine unexpected diners and we were seated with a view of the castle and its moat. Drinks and food duly arrived and were consumed with satisfaction. The agricultural nature of the route out and its undulations led some to speculate that it must have been a Clive route, though I didn’t know when I picked it out of our database. I can now say that we last rode it April 2018; it was a route I’d put together; and at the time we also felt the surfaces to be very bad, though somewhat wetter than today.
Eventually it was time to leave and we exited Whittington on the A-road before turning off to pass through Hindford again. We then travelled towards Perthy where we had our first unexpected stop. Dave called us to a halt as he needed to clear his mudguards. Task duly done, we saddled up to again be halted by Matt who had a puncture in one of his front tyres. After some delay the offending thorn, a very tiny one, was discovered and the repair made. Shortly after we passed though the edge of Dudleston Heath and were now on less hilly ground and able to make faster progress, as time passed and the temperature star to drop. We crossed the main road at Holly Bush and entered Worthenbury. From here we took our regular route through Shocklach and into Farndon. Some continued back to the start in Holt. But Matt, Trevor and I decided to avoid crossing the river to Holt, and instead took more direct routes home through Aldford.
The total length of the route was 45 miles. Setting aside the quality of the surfaces, this is a good route through attractive countryside with a good pub in a picturesque setting. Much enjoyed I hope by all.
One postscript: with darkness closing in and with a mile to go to home, I was brought to a halt by a puncture. I hope that others’ return journeys were less troublesome.
See routemap and/or gpx file download
SHa
No comments:
Post a Comment