------------
So I have a new bike. Well the frame is new
and it will run single speed 
I'd started thinking about my 1st proper ride and where it should be. I'd rather not take on serious hills until I've done a long ride, so a canal ride might be the answer. Then on another cycling forum I saw a question about riding the Liverpool & Leeds Canal. Our very own Whitestone posted some useful information, and the start of a trip plan formed. Nothing hasty, like maybe the upcoming weekend
Consensus in the thread was that riding from Liverpool was the better option and it just so happened that bike friendly London Midland run between my local station (with free parking) and Lime Street and I could get a ticket for £37 off peak return
Plan A. I would ride the canal to Leeds and take the train back (204 km, 127 1/2 miles). However the earliest train would not get me into Lime Street before 9:10 am and the last train back from Leeds would be at 8:50 pm. Which gave only 11 hrs 40 mins to cover the 215 km on a bike geared to a comfortable 20 kph on the road unloaded
The plan would need some modificationLooking back at my GPS track I see that I actually did it in 11 hrs 50 mins moving time, 18 kph average but in an elapsed time of 15 hrs 50 mins
I could bivy before reaching the end of canal but then I couldn't claim to have ridden in one go. Or I could ride to the centre of Leeds, then head out somewhere quieter for the night and head back in the next day. But if I was going to bivy then why not ride back to Liverpool the next day? If I did that, then what route to take? I wasn't that keen on riding back on the canal again
More internet searching and I came up with the Transpennine Trail. It is 137 km from Penistone to Liverpool and trains run between Leeds and Penistone. Last one at 9:37 pm. I also noted that there were several branches of the TPT that headed between Leeds and Penistone. However, it was getting late and I needed to be up and away in 5 hours to the station... I had two routes in my Garmin and ViewRanger on my phone for the gap in the middle. Plan B set
So the Mukluk comes in at under 12kg with the plus tyres and single speed. I loading as I'd expect for 200-300 km ITT, but without tent, or tarp. Gearing was limited by the 28T Fat Bike chainring and my selection of 26" friendly sprockets. I went with 28 x 17 which gave an easy spinning 18 kph
Saturday starts well and I'm at the station early enough to catch the 6:08 to Birmingham New Street. Plenty of time for a station coffee and pan au raisin before the Liverpool train. Then I notice on my phone that the there is an earlier Liverpool train that leaves from an adjacent platform at the same time as mine is due to arrive. I positioned myself by the doors to make a sharpe exit and easily made it. I was in Liverpool 30 mins earlier than expected
8:52 am and I'm heading away from the station towards the docks. The canal links to the Mersey at Stanley Dock under Great Howard Street Bridge. Access to the start of the tow path is through a small opening in the brick wall (Top Left on the picture below)
The towpath there is either tarmac, or smooth gravel and I make good progress. At 12.5 km I reach my first coffee stop. As I start to ride again I find that my Garmin touch screen has stopped working
Nothing for it than a restart but at least it allowed me to save the file on reboot. Back on my way and I'm only encountering the occasional dog walker. My new Salsa carbon rustler bars have allowed me to fit the Oi bicycle bell won in the WRT raffle and it gets good use throughout the ride. It worked well in almost all cases. I think a klaxon may have struggled with some of the elder walking types. Still, nobody complained, or got upset, so all was good Canals are blessed with plenty of quality watering holes, this was good because I'd forgotten a water bottle for my seat tube mount. I picked up a Dr Pepper bottle at the first stop and carried that for the rest of the trip. I also noted that many locks had boaters facilities with outside taps which I used well. I carried a water filter but didn't fancy it's chances against what goes into the canal. I never felt the need to look further afield for water
No beer here at this photo stop in Blackburn
I made coffee/food stops along the L&L route: Tesco, Litherland (12.5 km, 45 mins), The Blue Mallard, Burscough Bridge (44 km, 3 hours), Lock & Quay, Chorley (81 km, 5:07), The Top Lock, Whittle-le-Woods ( 83 km, 5:25), Inn on the Wharf, Burnley (125 km, 8:15), McD's, Skipton (170 km, 12 hrs), Boat House Inn, Saltaire (193 km, 14 hrs). I only ate at Tesco's, Top Lock (carried sandwiches), Inn on the Wharf, McD's and at the end of the L&L in Armouries Square, Leeds (rest of my carried sandwiches + a can of beer whilst I planning my next route
)However my best stop of the whole ride was Fredrick's Ice Cream shop. It's on the Bolton Road, south of Chorley. It's signposted on the canal but you have to ride up to the road about 100m. Liquorice and Rum n Raisin cornet
Anecdote from that stop was an encounter with a gent on crutches, who came over and started asking questions about the size of my tyres and the fact I was running single speed. I thought I was going to need to show him my BB pin badge but it turned out he was a fellow MTB'er and has some bivy kit yet to be used. He was telling me about his club mate John who was out on a fat bike in Iceland
So I'm in Leeds at midnight. I'd completed 215 km and felt good. Using ViewRanger I worked out that I needed NCN Route 67 south to get out of Leeds and link up with my next Garmin route starting at Penistone. I find that the TPT is well way marked and I made very few navigational errors. There were a few occasions where the sign was obscured from my direction of travel but I never traveled more than a few meters before tracking back
For most of the day the weather had been fine. Good cloud cover and a gentle breeze from the SW pushing me along. Temperature was around 15c throughout Saturday and only dropped to 9c in the early hours during the rain. The GF responded to my FB post at the 1/2 point on the L&L asking if it was raining. It hadn't been up until then but soon after the 1st few spots fell
It stayed on and off with light rain until around 1am but other than putting on my gilet, I didn't need extra protection. From 1am the rain became heavier but it was still too warm for a waterproof. I started to look for somewhere to take shelter whilst I got my head down for a few hours. I was also thinking about the tarp Matt had/has on his 'Massive !! I mean massive clearout....' in the classifieds and why had I passed it over 
. I saw what looked like a bird hide just before Woodlesford Lock but I felt it was too early (it was 1:50am) and I then got distracted by the diversion over the canal lock gates!! To digress, there were two other interesting features of the Aire/Calder section that would make following the TPT on a tandem, or heavily loaded tourer interesting. 1st were the steps down off of the Skelton Grange Road bridge at Stourton. I passed it twice looking for the track until I realised that yes, that was the only way down to the towpath with a TPT sign 
. 2nd was the bridge over the River Calder at the end of the Aire and Calder Navigation. It's proper steep steps and they were wet. Just after the bridge was a tunnel under the railway line. It was dry, fairly clean and my chosen rest spot As it was still quite warm and no wind I decided not to get out my sleeping bag and bivy bag. Instead I swapped my wet cycling top for a merino top and down jacket and sat against the wall on my backpack. I had a used foil blanket with me that I wrapped around my legs. I'd stopped at 3am and spent 15-20 mins getting settled down. I set my alarm for 4:50am with the aim to be on my way around 5:30am. The rain was forecast to end around 6am
. I closed my eyes and listened to the rain fall, which by now was quite heavy. I must have gotten some sleep as the next time I checked my phone it was 4:30am. Time for a brew and some porridge. I was packed up and ready as the phone alarm went off. Even better the rain had stopped and dawn was near. I'd ridden 240 km to that point and reckoned it was a further 35 km to the start of the western section of the TPT at Penistone. That meant I had just over 100 miles back to Liverpool station. It was less than the previous day's riding but there would be hills....It was a lovely peaceful time to be riding. I stopped at the NCN figure post at Walton Colliery Nature Park and took a picture of the steam over the lake and enjoyed the early sunshine. It was hard to see that this had once been a coal mine
Morning mist
I carried on south and the TPT now followed the old Barnsley canal towpath. This was one of my favourite parts of the ride and it was quite a while before I came across a fellow user getting his early morning exercise on foot. I stopped for breakfast at the Mc'D in Stairfoot at 7am, with 20 km (264 total) ridden. Two chicken and bacon with cheese bagels plus coffee never tasted so good
The TPN was now on the old Woodhead railway line and it was climbing at around 1.5% on the Worsborough incline until the diversion around the closed Silkstone tunnels. The route turned left and headed up and over Bower hill. This was my fist proper test of the single speed gearing. In 3.4 km it rose over 110m at 3% average (6.6% max) and apart from stopping to look over the bridge at the other rail line I cleared it in one
At Penistone I started to see people activity, with walkers, joggers and cyclists on the trail. There was a steady headwind and I slowly caught and passed a pair of blokes on their retro garage bikes. The rear marker was struggling to hold his lead's wheel but as soon as I passed them they both found something extra and came back past to lead into the Dunford Bridge picnic spot..... I stopped there myself and set up a brew in the lee of the TDF mosaic artwork. I noticed that the recreational riders were either turning back here, or loading bikes into cars. I knew that the Woodhead tunnel had closed and I could just about remember the climb up over Windle Edge from my last visit in the early 2000's. Soon I set off up the 'hill' and made a good job of it. A guy on a 26" OO had pulled in for his own rest at Dunfold Bridge whilst I'd been drinking my tea. He caught me again in the dip down to the stream south of the A628. We crossed back over the road and carried on our way until I nearly took him out when making a sharp left turn to keep on the TPN. I spotted the small marker sign at the last second and Jason even later on my left shoulder
. We've since commented on each others epic rides on Strava and I've apologised for the sharp turn... The Woodhead tunnel diversion is of a completely different character to the rest of the TPT route and must come as a shock to those less experienced cyclists that attempt it. I remember the chatter at the time when the National Grid announced that they were to take over the 2nd tunnel
Further on I followed the alternative route into Hadfield stopping at the Tesco Express to resupply and continued down looking for a food stop. I eventually spotted Scott's cafe and had a proper second breakfast, the all day 'Big Un' washed down with 2 cups of tea
The ride from there became more urban as I worked across the southern settlements of the Manchester metro area. I stopped at a small community cafe at the Reddish Vale Country Park and upon restarting to ride my Garmin crashed and restarted it's self
I knew from past experience that the data wasn't lost but with 333km and 30 hours of data now trapped it was still a bummer. After the ride I was able to pull the .FIT files from the Garmin and stitch them together in RidewithGPS 
Stockport was the only place where I seemed to lose the TPT. I ended up in the bus station before rejoining at the path beside the River Mersey. Reaching the river felt like I was on the home run, even though the Garmin told me there was still over 80 km yet to go until Liverpool station. I'd resigned myself that I was going to need to find somewhere to stay overnight
By now sitting on the saddle and pressing through the balls of my feet were becoming quite painful. I had to resort to pedalling 100 m and then freewheel 10 standing up to ease things. I was still making reasonable progress but it was tempering the enjoyment of the ride. I was relieved to come across the CoOp at Rushgreen to resupply for the expected night stop and ease the aches for a while
Back on the trail and I soon reached one of my milestones for the trip. Passing under the M6 at the Thelwall Viaduct. I've often looked down from the M6 and thought it would be good to ride alongside the Manchester Ship Canal. Unfortunately the TPT crosses at the southern end of the viaduct ramp along with the A56. It joins the ship canal at Latchford Locks and runs along side until heading back in to the Mersey after skirting Warrington. I stopped quite fittingly at Black Bear Park at a park bench which had one of the few views through the trees to the canal below. I sat on the bench and cracked open one of the beers I'd picked up at the CoOp
I was checking the train times on my phone and noticed that the last train from Liverpool home was in around 35 mins but that it stopped at Runcorn in about 50
ViewRanger showed the station to be around 10km from where I was and there was a reasonably straight route there. I just had to navigate it quickly 
I packed up quickly and set off with a renewed vigour, all thoughts of painful contact points dispelled. Up the Chester Rd and onto the Runcorn Rd was pretty quick. I discounted correctly the Bridgwater Canal towpath and headed west until I met the new Mersey bridge works. Fortunately there was still footpath access through and a continued into town and to the station. I made it with less than 5 mins to spare but I was on the Birmingham train heading home. Looking now at the map, I see I could have carried on along the ship canal into town over the Old Quay Street bridge and saved some extra distance. But would it have been quicker?
Total distance covered was 390 km, in 36 hours (22 hours 51 mins moving) at an average speed of 17.1 kph. https://ridewithgps.com/trips/16539713
I sat down on the train with a celebratory beer and pork pie and checked my connection times at Birmingham New Street. It showed that my train would arrive 3 mins after my connection departed
and this time they would not be on adjacent platforms. The train I'd seen on my phone earlier was the Virgin service that leaves just after the London Midland I was on but overtakes ours whilst we stop at most stations on route. I didn't have a ticket for the Virgin train, even less a bike reservation. I made a sharpe exit again when we pulled in the station and into the elevator ahead of the crowd, only to have one of the quicker foot passengers reach the doors before they closed. At the top I hot totted it to the next elevator and descended to an empty platform The luck I had coming up reversed and it was looking like a long night's wait 
Salvation came in the form of another Virgin train heading south that stopped at Rugby. That would mean a 10 mile ride to get to my car but that was better than a night with the brummie drunks. Ticket quickly purchased whist walking alongside the train towards the back and the guards van. There was no one near that end of the train so I boarded with my bike near the restaurant car. I positioned it in the passageway so that it didn't block access and took a seat nearby
There was a group of Asian gents in front of me discussing how cheaply they had got their return tickets to London. Shortly after the Train Manager arrived to check tickets. One of the group had a invalid London Midland ticket and they got into a lengthy discussion about how he would get a refund. All the time the TM kept looking at my bike and it wasn't a good look. As soon as he'd finished with the ticketless guy, he asked who's was the bike? As if I didn't stand out in mud splattered cycling kit that was just a little ripe
Without even checking my ticket he ordered me to follow him off the train that had by now just pulled into Birmingham International, and I thought then that he was going to throw me off there. Anyway I prevailed upon him that it was late and that I'd missed the last LM train home. To his question about why I hadn't booked the bike space I explained that whilst I can book a train ticket is seconds on my smart phone, getting a bike reservation is harder than a US visa... Anyway he relented and muttering about delaying the train and opened the door to the guards van. I was a little concerned that he'd forget to let me out again at Rugby but he did and after thanking him I was outside Rugby station just after 11:15 pm
I set off SE across town to pick up the A428 heading towards the M6. At that time of night I wasn't trusting the mobile metal box users and kept to the footpaths and service roads. My USE lights may cause retina damage but might be ineffective in town at that time of night. A couple of Police cars and an Ambulance on 'Blues' seemed to prove my point
I was relieved to reach the Kilsby Road and head out into the unlit roads and countryside. From Kilsby there was about 3km on the A5 down past Watford Gap and then off towards Watford Village. Nothing came past on the A5 but it's wide and I've never had a problem in this area. There was a climb up into Long Buckby village and I was a little concerned to see 'Road Closed' signs but it was ok for pedestrians and bikes and I could freewheel down Station Road and back to my car. As if the emphasize how late it was, the Caledonian Sleeper passed through the station as I was loading my bike. I was soon on my way home arriving through the door just before 1am. Quick shower and bed. Out for the count until 9:15am
The extra ride had added another 17km to my weekend total, taking me to over 400 km and over a 1,000km in a month for the first time
Next day it was time to survey the damage. Nothing to dramatic for me, with just the imprint of a string vest rubbed into my lower back and slightly tender posterior and balls of my feet. The Mukluk did better with no mechanicals at all. There was some paint rash on the lower forks and rear dropouts, from becoming wedged in one of the many anti-motorcycle (and fat bike) gates on the L&L. No two were the same size apparently and this one was smaller than all the others
After that one I took to lifting the bike over the gate beside insteadWhilst the terrain might not have been up to BB200 standards, the route presented its own challenges. I'm convinced that riding on the flat long distances is almost as tiring due the inability to take a breather coasting downhill, or climbing out the saddle up. I was really pleased that I was able to ride at a consistent pace for almost 36 hours and still move the next day. I'd already decided that a new saddle was required and that's now arrived and been fitted. As have a pair of Bamboo undershorts. I've also addressed the gearing slightly by fitting a 30 tooth absoluteBLACK Oval direct mount chainring. The 17T rear sprocket will remain on for the next challenge planned for something more hilly!
The foot pain I'm putting down to my shoes and the lack of insole support. I've just switched over to Flats and haven't invested in any new shoes to match. The Shimano SPD shoes I used have a good sole to grip the pedals but as I found to my cost have no insole to speak of. It's no more that 3mm thick and has become heavily compressed. Added to that the shoe last is a plastic moulding with cut outs leaving little to spread the load though into my feet. For now I will try some better insoles whilst I investigate better shoes for long distance riding
Both the Liverpool & Leeds Canal and the Trans Pennine Trail are ones I would recommend. They may not be technically challenging but there is plenty to see and places to stop
Full album of the weekends ride and kit check here: https://www.flickr.com/gp/150583371@N02/1M364v
Andy
