I woke up not feeling too positive about getting all the way to Manchester which was about 70 miles away. I didn’t fancy another day as long as the previous and finding my way through Manchester was always the bit of the ride that I didn’t really fancy so I was less than enthusiastic  about getting going. Once I did get started, the road was a relatively flat and quiet route and the miles started to roll by and I was feeling fine and becoming more positive.

The first little village that I got to is called Audlen but straight away the absence of signs or my inability to spot them got me frustrated. The locals standing at the cross were having a great time as I passed them repeatedly trying to find my way out of their one-horse town. Eventually I opted to blast (or as close to it as I get) straight up the A road that I was on that had a big sign saying Nantwich which was where I wanted to go. I got there in half the time and distance that the approved route would have taken if I could have found it. Once in Nantwich I picked up the Sustrans route again on the High Street and promptly lost it at the first major roundabout on the way out again because of missing signs – a frustrating feature of trying to follow the route that was beginning to become really annoying and quite literally, a waste of time. When I did eventually pick up the route again I reached the next town of Winsford quite quickly but once again only found my way out by chancing upon a cyclist who had just come the other way – “go through the underpass, over the blue bridge and round the back of The Red Lion pub” The route from there was not enjoyable with multiple gates that you could barely get a bike through, rough gravel and overgrown paths and the day was starting to feel a bit like the day before.

I eventually got to Northwich to meet up with Helen for lunch which was a nice respite. After Northwich you come to the first bit of the route for which there are no Sustrans paths and you follow a series of directions on main roads to take you to the Trans-Pennine cycle route which sounds very grand and in the main is a flat gravel path but is broken and occasionally is a narrow earth path with overhanging nettles and other undergrowth which leads you via the Mersey Valley to the outskirts of Manchester.  There is a National Cycle route 6 which leads northwards through Manchester and I did occasionally stumble across it but there are cycle lanes everywhere and I simply used my GPS to take me to the hotel. Finding my way out of the city is a problem for tomorrow.

I didn’t take any photos or video today (altough Helen did) and just concentrated on completing the journey which covered 66 miles with a mere 1,800 feet of ascent and took from 9.30am until 6pm. I managed to average over 10mph in contrast to the 8 mph of the day before and I finished feeling much fresher than the day before.