Slow I know! I have had my bike for 9 months now and have only just made 150 miles, despite aspirations of doing the Manchester to Blackpool bike ride this year.
I was asked yesterday by a friend at work if I wanted to go for a bike ride today. I had previously offered to share the pain so to speak as she was struggling to motivate herself to get out. So I agreed to go if it wasn’t raining or blowing a gale.
As it turned out the weather was nice this morning, a little windy but no worse than last weekend. An added bonus was that it was sunny. The weather forecast was for overcast but fortunately it was wrong.
We had already agreed on a route to get to Fairhaven lake from her house in Lytham. By Google maps it was about 5 miles, which was good since that was the kind of distance out that I wanted to do. I drove out to Lytham with the bike on the roof of the car.
The route took us down Green drive, which is a shared cycle path and foot path. Nice and leafy! Then out to Saltcoats and the mini roundabout at Lytham road. Here we turned right towards the Prom. Then after Lytham Quays it was left off the road onto the sea front. Up until now we had been travelling at about 13mph, but we soon slowed down due to pedestrians. Onwards past Lytham windmill towards Fairhaven Lake. I had never been down this path and it was a nice change to see the landmarks from a different angle.
We stopped for a water and bum break at the St Annes end of the lake, watching the birds. By now it was lunch time so we rode the short distance to the cafe, locked the bikes up and had a sandwich.
We debated riding on to St Annes but decided against it, leaving that to a later date. and chose to ride back the way we came. The ride back was against the wind, but was no different to the ride out.
Next time we will ride to St Annes from Lytham, just to push it further. I like riding with other people its better than riding alone!
