Another week, another marina and, despite the good weather forecast, another low turn out. Only 8 members turned up at Cleopatra's on what promised to be a warm sunny day. Six of us intended to ride, these being Alan, Clive, Dave P, George, Ray and myself. Dave M had ridden out for coffee and was heading home afterwards. The 8th member was Peter, who was out to join us for coffee for the first time since suffering a stroke at the beginning of the year. Good to see that he is on the road to recovery and hopefully he will be able to join us for a full ride before too long.
As we were sitting outside in the sunshine enjoying our morning coffee someone pointed out that none of our usual ride leaders were present. I had my Garmin with me so I started looking through it to find a suitable ride and the first one I came across for Holt was a 40-miler which went virtually south to Bettisfield before turning back northwards for the return. So where was lunch going to be, I was asked, to which I had to shrug my shoulders and reply 'I don't know'. From the map my best guess was that it would be the Hanmer Arms but someone thought that it had closed again. Clive suggested Wixhall Marina which he knew was just a few miles from Bettisfield so it was decided that I would lead the ride with Clive leading the last bit to the marina.
The sat-nav doesn't show which way the route was originally ridden so for personal reasons, which will become apparent later, I opted to lead it in an anti-clockwise direction. The six of us set out across the Dee Bridge and as we passed the turning towards Chester it was immediately clear that the original route had been clockwise. Fortunately Garmin haven't introduced a voice which keeps telling you to 'turn around when possible' so we turned right, crossed the A534 and headed down through Shocklach to Worthenbury. Before reaching Bangor-on-Dee we turned left towards Holly Bush and then Penley. Passing through the village we turned right and passed through Breadon Heath and on to Bettisfield.
At this point my route turned us left but Clive took over and we turned right for Northwood. Here we turned left and then left again to Whixhall Marina at Dobsons Bridge. Whixhall itself is actually 2 miles away but what's in a name? The important thing is that it has a cafe where most of us opted for a panini.
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| Photo by CER |
After lunch we retraced our route back to Bettisfield then continued north to Hanmer. The Hanmer Arms was indeed closed and up for sale. Another sad loss to our list of lunch venues. After Hanmer we had just over a mile of A-roads before turning off at Eglwys Cross. A few miles later we had a long straight descent into Lower Wych. I barely had the time to pat myself on the back for missing this ascent by doing the route anti-clockwise when, shortly after passing through the tiny Hamlet, we started cycling up again on a hill which I'm sure was much steeper. To avoid a further climb through Malpas we turned left and after a short detour to avoid a one-way street (who puts one-way streets in the middle of the countryside?) we headed through Chorlton and Horton Green and into Tilston.
After turning left Dave cycled up to me and said that he and the others wanted to stop at The Lost Barn for coffee. Faced with this mutiny and being outnumbered I had no option but to agree. I must admit, though, that they do do good coffee. I was also quite impressed by their cycle rack. Much better on the wheels than the ground mounted racks that most places had.
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| Photo by TC |
Soon after The Lost Barn there is a short cut along Wetreins Lane. Alan wanted to take it as he had ridden out from Flint and had a log ride home. He took it and Ray went with him. The rest of us carried on, crossing back over the A534 at Barton. We followed the winding lanes through Coddington to Churton. Here the route turned left for the final run to Farndon and back over the River Dee to Holt. However for Clive and I, who had ridden down from Chester, it was closer to home to turn right. (Aah, so that's why the anti-clockwise route was chosen). Checking that George and Dave knew their way back, I sent them on their way to complete what would have been about 47 miles while Clive and I made our own ways home.
See route map and/or gpx file download
TC
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