Today I rode almost exactly 100 miles. I also caught up with 5 friends and was treated to a full Sunday roast dinner AND crumble with lashings of custard. Not to mention cheese. That is pretty decent going for single day. Add to that a puncture that I had to repair on the streets of central Derby and I have every reason to feel I am making the most of these early October days.
In essence, today I rode right across the top of Shropshire, which was peaceful and beautiful; and then Staffordshire, which was very pleasant and surprisingly hilly; and then the bottom end of Derbyshire, which was also lovely until I reached Derby itself. For the last 20 miles or so I had quite a bit of urban cycling to do, mostly by choice, in the suburbs of Derby and Nottingham. I somehow managed to turn up on time for a 6pm appointment at an old friend’s house, despite calculating the night before that it couldn’t be done if I had breakfast first at my hotel. Which I did, obviously. So I am also pretty pleased with myself about that. I must have been moving at a consistently decent pace throughout the day. But I was also moving, it seems, for 8 hours out of the elapsed 9. It was certainly a good day to do so. Mostly sunshine and blue skies, with a little cloud and a light, helpful breeze. Perfect cycling weather.
So back to Chirk, and my overnight stop. It turned out that I slept in a hotel in England; but walked to a restaurant in the High Street which is in Wales. The border is a couple of minutes’ walk from the edge of the village and there are no big signs to announce your arrival in either nation. Such signs as there are heading east denote entry into Shropshire, rather than England, and are also somewhat obscured by an overgrown bush! I presume it can’t matter that much to the locals.
My journey from the hotel to Nottingham lay entirely within England and began with a peal of church bells as I passed the big church in St Martins. It was the tiniest of country lanes from here to the small town of Ellesmere, where I may have seen my first cars. The mere itself, a large lake right next to the town, looked a picture shimmering in the morning sunshine, where people were out getting exercise and visiting the waterside cafe. I would have been happy to join them, but after 7 miles I could not justify it.
I carried on along more miles of pretty, gently rolling lanes and in another ten miles or so reached the small town of Wem. Again, these were about the only places with traffic of any kind. Every town and village was pleasant and most seemed to have very impressive sandstone churches, with big square towers being the local preference. Most of the other buildings were built of red brick, sometimes painted white. The more rural settlements often had even older half timbered black and white buildings. And so it continued for three hours or more. Since progress was good, I didn’t stop until I reached Eccleshall, a well appointed looking place that presented appealing refreshment options that other cyclists had clearly just been enjoying. Time for lunch. I landed in a pastrami and blue cheese sort of establishment, so that’s what I had. It was delicious.
Duly refuelled, I crossed the M6 motorway and pushed on through the pleasant Staffordshire canal town of Stone, which sits on the south flowing infant River Trent, a little to the south of Stoke. I would be crossing the Trent again tomorrow in a much larger form, to the east of Nottingham. Its route is anything but straight. Mine, however, was about to get much straighter, since I had plans to join a Roman road a few miles later. And this I did, just past Upper Tean, and followed it all the way to Derby. That is a journey of almost 20 Roman miles through a string of tiny villages on the most peaceful of lanes. It runs perfectly west to east and bisects an area of countryside that seems to be mostly unvisited, which means it is also a delight. On the higher sections, you can see for miles, especially to the south. I remember being fascinated by this part of the Midlands, and this road in particular, in my early map browsing days. It feels somehow separated from everything above and below. the villages are small and mostly extensions of large country estates. There is a the occasional inviting pub. If I lived nearby I would make a habit of visiting. But I don’t and where I live is even more worth visiting. Nevertheless, it was just right for today.
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Close to the point where this road crosses the county boundary at the River Dove is the village and former Roman settlement of Rocester. Today it is dominated by the world headquarters of JCB, highly successful manufacturers of yellow mechanical diggers. The company was founded by Joseph Cyril Bamford in 1945 when he began to sell tipping trailers made from surplus WW11 parts and scrap metal. It has grown from one man in a garage in Uttoxeter into a global brand with 11,000 employees. It remains a family business and Lord Bamford, Joseph’s son, is the chairman today. The area around the huge factory is beautifully landscaped and I stopped for an ice cream energy boost by a large duck pond, which was a popular spot today.
Things were going unfeasibly well until I reached a very busy roundabout coming into central Derby, and then I felt that horrible sensation of riding on a flat tyre. I did about as swift a change as possible in the circumstances; but it was another 20 minutes down the drain, which I could ill afford. Thank goodness I bought that inner tube yesterday in Porthmadog! The culprit was a tiny little thorn that I had trouble getting out of my tyre. So that makes two punctures in about 5,000 miles of riding, which I think is acceptable.
I used my local knowledge of the East Midlands and was only minutes away from the end of my journey just north of Nottingham city centre, when the traffic ground to a halt. And then it hit me. It was the first weekend in October. Goose Fair – the country’s biggest fun fair. It is huge. And loud. As a student I lived for a couple of years right across the road from the Goose Fair site. Back then it seemed like fun, if you like that kind of thing. They had huge rides; but also things like fortune tellers and boxing. Tonight, though, it was more minutes lost. Oh well. It looks pretty.
