Two for the price of One

• Books: A Handbook of Communications Skills & Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire
• Miles Travelled: 20
• Trip Highlight: The Canal Boat Graveyard

The Canal Boat graveyard was a ‘should have bought my phone moment’ – I’m sure I’ll be back that way again, but it was an unexpected sight whilst pootling along the Bridgewater Canal in the mid-section of this particular book delivery. You’ll either need to go there or await my return with camera / phone.

The two book thing was a little bit of a cheat to be honest. The communication skills book has been added to the ‘work library’, which essentially means its bulking out the shelf on the bookcase in my office. Of course there are a few people I could recommend read it but I’m much too diplomatic for that (maybe I’ll add the diplomacy book later).

However, the good thing was that work was on the route of one of the ways I could get to the second drop off, so I got to ride a decent section of the Bridgewater canal  which runs from Runcorn to Leigh. To press the furthest west I’ve been is Lymm and this trip extended the route East to Stretford (it does run all way into Manchester). Between Altrincham and Stretford it’s a tale of second half good, first half not so good, to reverse a caricatured Sven Goran Eriksson quotation. From Altrincham to Brooklands Tram station is rutted and gets extremely muddy and is not for the faint hearted (particularly of a winters evening). Past Brooklands and its had some good investment and attracts cyclists, runners, people walking their dogs and others just out for a stroll – a vision of what all urban canal sides should be.

Having located the drop off point I manoeuvred my way back to the Trans Pennine Way – National Cycle Route 62 – of which more in later posts I think. Suffice to say that the mid stretch of this, which cuts through some woods adjacent to farmland was heavily flooded with patches of up to 50 metres at a time of the pathway under water. Luckily a ‘serious’ MTBer had passed me earlier but was struggling to shake me off and he acted as my guinea pig to make sure they were passable (they were just – good test for the bike in its first off road excursion)

All in all it was a good Sunday ride out, 20 miles bagged, 2 books delivered and £2.20 added to the charity pot. Shame about the lack of photos though.