clairedavieswriter

Today’s early hero was Dylan of Dilly’s Bike Shed in Glazebrook, who successfully extracted and replaced my sheared and frayed gear cable, so that I was on my way, with a fully functioning multi-speed bike, by 11am.

It’s safe to say that his establishment didn’t bear much resemblance to our local bike shop:

But the service was excellent, and at £15 including parts, extremely good value. As I cycled away, I reflected again on my extraordinary good fortune to find a bike repair shop less than 2 miles up the road from my overnight stop.

Thick fog had made for cold hands and knees first thing, but by 11 it was starting to lift…

And by snack time the fingers had warmed up nicely. I rode the rest of the day in warm sunshine.

Within an hour I’d chalked up another county, crossed yet another canal – the Leeds and Liverpool – and come across the first former coal mine of the trip, at Astley Green.

Between Tyldesley and Bolton I cycled almost entirely on traffic free ‘greenways’, which were relaxing but tragically short on cafés.

Which meant that by Bolton (its rather fine town hall below) I was more than ready for a coffee and something to eat. The Coffee Grind, in the smartly pedestrianised town centre, did the trick, and I had a nice chat with a local character who seemed to know everyone passing by. She pointed out that the town’s name derived from ‘Bowl town’, and hence every road out was uphill. Oh joy.

A thank you to my second (anonymous) hero of the day: the man on a park bench in Bolton who insisted on putting my very oily chain back on when it slipped off – “I used to work in ‘alfords, me”.

There were some good protected cycle lanes in Bolton, and work was underway to build more near the station, but truth be told the first part of the ride out of town, unlike the way in, was a pretty torrid experience in heavy traffic.

Once I’d negotiated that, while also trying to avoid the potholes and alarming quantity of broken glass in the road, I discovered that my café friend had not exaggerated. The climb from the Bury Road past the Harwood Lee golf course and on to Torrington was a lung buster, but the views were rewarding. That’s Manchester down there.

And it wasn’t over yet: that was followed by an epically long ascent through Holcomb, past the Peel Tower and onto the Helmshore Road, on the grandly named Lancashire Cycleway, which was actually just the road. Without wishing to toot my own horn, I was pretty proud to get up all that. Maybe my legs have finally got their conditioning? I guess tomorrow will tell.

It’s frustratingly hard to capture in a photo, so you’ll just have to take my word for it – this was really high.

My love-hate relationship with the blessed Garmin reached a new low when, after all that, it thought fit to route me up and back down two very steep hills in Haslingden, simply to avoid 200 yards of the Blackburn Road that I would happily have cycled.

I cheered myself up watching this farmer racing around on a quad bike trying to persuade some very comfortable recumbent cows that they needed to get up and be milked. “Coom on now girl, get oop’.

As ever, it’s good to see your destination on the board…

And the greenway was an unexpected joy, whisking me downhill into Accrington on an old railway line, away from the rush hour traffic.

My thanks to my second Warmshowers host, Christine, and her cycling friends Alison and Sue, for making me feel so welcome in Oswaldtwistle and telling me so many good stories. Tomorrow, Kirkby Lonsdale.