Day 13 : WHITTLE - LE - WOODS to INGLETON : A Roads Are Not So Bad .......

WHITTLE-LE-WOODS to INGLETON:  'A' Roads are Not so Bad after all...

15 September 2012

Miles: 53.9

Average Speed:

Feet up: 3864

Feet down: 3189

(don't forget to check out yesterday's photos, added this morning)

The weather Gods loved us more today, in that it was fine, and the wind was at our back for a lot of the day.

We decided to pre empt the CTC route over little lanes and stick to A roads. This worked well, far better terrain for biking, although the down side is the constant noise from the traffic, to say nothing of being constantly super aware of the size and speed and distance from you of the traffic speeding by. Sometimes it was very intense, and we actually lost about an hour at one point to a traffic jam . For what will be forever unknown reasons, it took people two hours to go a couple of miles in their cars, and this made it very difficult for bikers to go by

At the end of the day, we were within 4 miles of Ingleton, which was our destination, when we thought that it might be better to head to High Betham, a market town 5 miles to the east. Well this was not a good decision, for after a grunty ride across five miles of moors, the only two pubs there were full, and everyone pointed us to guess where, yes, Ingleton, as the only place with any accomodation, so back we came to where there are loads of B and Bs.

I will let the piccies tell the story today........

                       A lovely note about the weather,,,,,, from our room at the Premier Inn

                          Oh, oh, not this again, after a 16% descent- just pushing up a country lane

                         At one point this group of runners was keeping up with us,,,

                                                    but then we got to go down again,,,

                   Biking the ring road around Blackburn - a long steady hill with a lovely bike path

                        Cheese and crackers in a breezy bus stop as a reward at the top of the hill

                                    My repair man, God bless him, pumping up my rear tyre

                                 A few miles further on and another kind of rest stop

JST cycling an A road with the welcoming "Lancashire cycle way" sign boldly displayed. Even although it was not all that well formed, there was space to cycle beside the large volume of traffic, and at least it put the idea the drivers' consciousnesses - do you think there is such a thing?????

Starting to get into the moors type country of Norfolk. (oops! We are in Yorkshire, not Norfolk - thanks Alex!)



Lanes with hedgerows are being replaced by lanes with rock walls, new and old

There were stock auctions going on in several towns. They reminded me so much of the stock sales in my village in NZ when I was growing up. Here were the same smells and sounds, the animals, and the auctioneers , and the women providing the food, making money for their organisations ( my step mum's was Country Women's Institute - does it still exist????)

A father and daughter inspecting some sheep

                  It is hard to do justice to the beauty of the lines of the stone walls in the paddocks

Posted with Blogsy