samuri.co.uk

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 44 miles

Valentines day ride. My son left his coat at the Velodrome after yesterdays session so I dedicaed to make todays ride a trip into Manchester. I anticipated it being very dull and dangerous but you know what? It wasn’t bad at all. I decided to ride in via normal roads and then ride back using as much canal as I could, that being the only offroad route possible, but more on that later.

Anyway, trundled in quite happily, right through the city centre, nice and quiet, clearly the best way of photographing the city is riding in early Sunday morning and snapping away before it gets busy, I’ll have to do that one day. Right through the centre, past Piccadilly, meandered around in the back streets behind the station, some cool looking alleys round there, proper old school. Then up the main road and left into the big Ardwick estate. It’s a bit dodgy but it’s nice and early, all the wrong’uns will be in bed after a long night’s causing mischief…. Nope. Rode round a corner to find a couple of big prestige cars parked across the road and a selection of what can only be described as ‘ganged up’ gentlemen stood around in poses of hardness. As soon as they saw me one started walking towards me in that wibbly wobbly walk with his hand near his crotch (I felt like I’d ridden into a  gang film of some description) and told me to eff off.

Right you are. I quickly turned it around and did a nice big loop onto Turing way and reached the drome without further incident. I collected the coat and made my way to the canal (which regular visitors will know, runs right next to the velodrome). I’d looked on the map and this canal ran right into the city centre, then a bit of a gap and then all the way back home. Sweet. Nope. It’s impossible to get onto the canal. I rode round the back of the ASDA and further up towards denton, every single access point is blocked off. Hmmm, head back towards manchster and don’t find any way of getting onto the canal until I get to Canal street. Ride through the centre on the really rather nicely done up towpath through to castlefield where it got so laborious going over bridges and doubling back that I gave up and rode out to old trafford where I pretty much rode the canal all the way back to Leigh.

Splendid. Travelled a lot further than I thought mind and I did that thing where I forgot to eat any breakfast or take any food with me so felt ever so slightly[1] drained when I got home.

[1] This may be an understatement.