4th June 2026: Ellesmere

 The weather forecast wasn’t good, Chirk is a long way, and it was my wedding anniversary – 3 good reasons not to bother with the ride from Chirk.  But bother I did and, with my bike loaded in the back of the car, I headed down to Chirk hoping that the rain wasn’t going to be too bad.

I was just entering the Castle Bistro a little after 10am, when Mike D was arriving on his bike from Chirk station after taking the train from Chester.  We ordered our coffees and sat down for a chat while we waited for other riders to arrive.

By 10:20, we came to the realisation that it was probably just going to be the two of us, and so it turned out.  Just before I had left home, I had fortuitously printed a paper map for the area east of Chirk as that was where the weather forecast had shown that it might be driest.  We discussed options and decided, in case the heavens opened, not to venture too far and so set out on a route towards Ellesmere.  I hadn’t thought that I would be leading a ride quite so early in my time with the club (or write my first blog as this was just my 4^th ride) but, as I had the map, it made sense for me to lead the way.  No SatNav, just good ‘old school’ map reading.

As my bike was electric and Mike’s wasn’t, I decided to switch off the battery so as not to set an unreasonable pace.  Shortly after we left Chirk, I was beginning to regret this as we had a vicious climb up from the River Ceiriog.  The road had dried a bit since the last shower but, even so, I had the occasional slips of the rear wheel on the steep inclines as I needed to get out of the saddle even in my lowest gear.  We both paused for a breather on the ascent when Mike realised that he had lost his water bottle, probably on the bumpy descent down to the river before we started the climb on the other side.  No way were we going back down to look for it and so we continued onwards and upwards. 

The next few miles were characterized by mud, cow muck (definitely a ride requiring mudguards), loose gravel, tree debris and, of course, plenty of dangerous pot holes.  The rain had started but it was light and intermittent and with no need to shelter to avoid getting soaked.  We passed through Dudleston and then around the south of Dudleston Heath.

As we entered Ellesmere, we made our way through resurfacing works that had closed the road to traffic and headed to the Boat House pub by the mere for lunch.  Mike reported that the sausage rolls had been good previously and that’s what we both had with some salad.   After lunch, we headed out towards Tetchill with more climbing on the agenda.  So soon after setting off again, legs were lethargic and we probably should have had a shorter break rather than chatting for so long over lunch.  The sun decided to make an appearance, enough for Mike to shed one of his layers.  We continued back to Chirk via Welsh Frankton, Hindford, around the south of Gobowen and up to Weston Rhyl before returning to our start point.

We arrived back early in Chirk at 2.15pm after just 40km (25 miles) but a decent 430m (1,410 ft) of ascent.  We ordered further hot drinks in the café, feeling quite smug that we had avoided any significant rain on the bikes whilst, through the window, heavy rain decided to make its presence felt.  We chatted on for over an hour, nothing about cycling but just about everything else including a new word for me, “dyscalculia” (the numerical equivalent of dyslexia) before we headed our separate ways back home to Chester.

Good company, very quiet country lanes and, although short, a challenging but rewarding cycle – 3 good reasons why I was pleased that I had made my way to Chirk that morning.

Anthony M

See route map and/or gpx file download