Day 10 Nantwich to Wigan

On the Canel near end of the day for approx 15km at end of today on this single canal.

Well it been 10 days , and it has gone so fast.

Today 86 km, so almost an average day but far flatter today and no where near the average per day ascents for the tour so far.

Really enjoyed most of today and the reason is -we were close to water. Canals and rivers. I was in heaven.

Started cool but all the afternoon was mainly sunny.

Travel mainly north today so if you look at the map I printed off below, you may be interested in where we are now.

stats-10 days done - 840 km total done, therefore 84 km per day average this point.

283 cycling minutes per day average-so 4.75 hrs approx. actually cycling but on the road and eating and stopping etc basically 8 hrs from about 9 am until 5 pm.

Ascents 10,000m so on average 1000m per day or the equivalent of 7.5 Kaiti hills 😀. Not that this a lot but definitely more than I expected as everyone said it flat. Well not true. Actually hills are great as they give you views. Glass ½ fill eh.

Andy giving us the briefing for today. He and his wife Qwen alternate each day, with one riding with us and the other taking the Van with our gear, and the driver races head and gets food, and prepares lunch venue and a cafe stop and drops gear off at our accommodation at the end and heaps of others stuff. They work really hard and we all agree we have struck gold with having them look after us.

A few shoots of our accommodation in Nantwich which we also shared with two there cycling tours. One a group of 10 from Bay of Plenty in New Zealand and organised by an Ian Stevens who I made contact with as he is a Trails Trust chair in his area., Ian used to live in Ngatapa and moved to BOP. North of Tauranga. Nice group and they are doing an unassisted tour and having great time. 30 days I think.

A daily task is washing yourself and your gear so ready and dry for the next day. Had a heated towel rail with gear trying to dry. Washed in the shower and then squeezed and rolled in towel and yes was dry to use in the morning.

The side entrance to the Tudor hotel 1585, it was rebuilt after a fire.

Assembling our gear onto bike for briefing

So much history

the bar inside, floors and walls have moved a bit

Photos of the Lounge inside, lovely

No everyday you wait 8 minutes for hot water, but all is forgiven as great hotel 1585 is a long time ago

This is where Lee -Anne was this morning. Yesterday she caught the train up to Windermere and is looking around Beatrix Potter countryside and then latter today moves to Glasgow to start her tour of Scotland tomorrow.

Lee -Anne send this from her accommodation in Windermere. Grand eh

Oh another canel, Yae 😀. Dorothy , one of our riders had a share in a canal boat until relatively recently and we are looking out for it. It probably won't be on the route we are taking.

This photo below was taken as we passed along a river/canal. We had stopped for morning tea at a rest home that was beside the canal walking /cycling path. It had a cafe inside and was in lovely surroundings and was warm place to have a break !. Had a soup to warm me up, oh yes and a treat and a drink as well 😀.

The route for today. Pretty Flat in prospect. small rise at the end.

And below is what we actually did, and this is a log from my bike computer talking to my laptop computer when I download the data at the end of the day. High tech eh. Well I actually had some iT problems today. My bike computer has a map screen that provides a route that you follow . Remember it's the size of a match box to look at and can do all this stuff.

Well for some reason when it receives a download of some map updates it also receives a battery save function, which means it continually goes into a battery save function and turns the screen off to save power but is operating in the background. To wake it up, you continually are hitting the touch screen which today had finger prints on it from me continually walking the jolly think up to see where I should be going, Not sure how to turn this function off and have researched and still not sorted it out.

B ... annoying when you are trying to look at where you are going, pardon my French

.The joys of route following.

On the other tours I have done, we had this available and also a tour guide note book. For some people they only used the note book as their route guide. It's handy to have both.

Below are random photos taken during the day and in no particular order

We found the Ark ! its on the way to Wigan

This canal boat is actually in lock as it descends down to the lower level. takes about 5 minutes. Don't know if photo captures the water height difference

History of the area and the strife. Interesting that the word with refers to salt. Salt was an important product for the preservation of meat. We had just down past a salt mine and factory. lots of different wits around England in reference to salt locations.

Bird life and loads of Bio diversity

Another lock, don't know if you can see the water height difference in this photo

Under a motorway shortly.

Beside a rail viaduct, huge and impressive

a rail crossing, well protected, that is going to Manchester

a little harbour. We came upon two or three of these.

A much needed break from a. busy backroad, that had been destroyed by presumably large lorries. UK has loads of pt holes folks. So much of the problems and political issues we talk about at home are just the same here in UK.

On the trail

On a toll bridge. Yes the users pay. The owner has an ancient right of way and users pay a toll and a young guy in the toll booth collects. Views to Manchester City in the background. This is a major water way in days gone bye.