With 7.5 days of holiday to use up at work before the end of May, to even get down to the maximum 10 carry over days, plus two bank holidays I needed a plan. With a sailing trip and a weekend away already lined up for the second bank holiday of the month I needed something to make the best of the early May bank holiday. And so the plan for a little ride home was born. 210 miles from Richmond to Warrington, when my longest previous ride was 60 miles… no problem right.
Day 1 – Richmond to Northampton
So with the roadbike hastily converted from a responsive racer to a lumbering load-carrier with the addition of a blackburn rack and standard-issue Ortlieb panniers, a very kind loan of a Garmin Edge 705 for navigation purposes and bit of bikeroutetoaster route planning done I was ready to go. On reflection, from the weight of the panniers and failure to consume all of the supplies I probably over-packed on sandwiches / maltloaf / energy gels.
The plan for day 1 was to head out from Richmond, up across London through Harrow and Watford then on up towards Northampton. The ride out of London was a bit of a drag on the navigation with lots of twists and turns and two annoying road closures but eventually made it out onto something like the open road beyond Watford.
That was all going to well until shortly before Leighton Buzzard when it became clear that trusting Bikeroutetoaster’s bike routing has one main wrinkle if you’re riding a roadbike – bridleways. In what was to become a recurring theme over the three days it soon become clear that this route might involve slightly more off road sections than anticipated.
After covering about 5 miles over off-road paths and negotiating a golf-course even the slightly bizarre bike path which cuts across the road ad infinitum through the centre of Milton Keynes seemed like welcome relief. The most positive bit about this part of the ride was assuring myself that the bike was tough enough if I was, bike, rack and bags all made it through unscathed.
After another good few miles on the road, developing a nice case of sunburn / cyclist tanlines eventually made it to Northampton, clocking up my longest ever ride at 75 miles by a good 15 miles. Glad I chose to make day 1 a long day – felt good and probably had the best of the weather with no headwind.
- Northampton Town Hall maybe?
Home for night 1 was an average Ibis hotel room which had two key advantages – it was cheap and they were perfectly happy for me to wheel my bike through the hotel and keep it my room overnight – the preferred option for bike security. After a quick powernap and shower to recover from my longest day in the saddle it was to time to celebrate day 1 down and to re-fuel – steak protein for the recovery and beer carbs for the energy for tomorrow at the Wig & Pen, the place to be in Northampton, obviously.
Stats from Day 1’s ride:
Day 2 – Northampton to Colton
After a good night’s sleep in the cheap but cheerful Ibis plan for day was to head up from Northampton across towards Staffordshire to the next stop at Colton.
The early riding on day 2 was definitely more pleasant with some excellent cycling roads between Northampton and Rugby and definitely none of the hectic nav required to get out of London. One of the first sights of the morning was a canal barge marina – not quite as picturesque as the yachting version.
After ending up slightly crispy on day 1 had to invest in some suncream for day 2 – after multiple reapplications that help with preventing anymore sunburn but definitely didn’t do much for the amount of road dust / flies it was possible to acquire during the course of the day.
Having made good progress during the day averaging over 15mph it looked like I was going to arrive at Colton before I could check into my accommodation for night 2 so decided to make a random concession to sight seeing and did a lazy lap of the Lichfield cathedral close.
Lunch on day 2 was scientifically engineered to maintain energy levels and avoid any danger of bonking:
After that detour, a nutritious lunch and final few miles over some up and down Staffordshire country I pulled into the impressive looking Colton House, bed for night 2. In it’s favour, Colton House is a cool old house turned into a very nice bed and breakfast with great breakfast, particularly the bacon courtesy of local supplier Packington Pork. All I can say is that pig definitely met it’s rightful destiny in life on my plate. On the slightly less favourable side, the owner at Colton House did a bit of impromptu bike maintenance on my machine overnight removing a light bracket locking nut which led to an irritating aborted start and wasted mile on the morning of day 3. All a bit fawlty towers but staying in this kind of place wouldn’t be the same without those kind of antics.
Stats for day 2:
Day 3 – Colton to Warrington
Day 3 got off to a tasty start with a great fry-up at Colton house but things went downhill from there. After a failed start and a wasted mile returning to the start within the first 10 miles I then had my worst nav moment of the trip completely failing to find a bridleway that sneaked through an industrial estate and instead spending the best part of an hour circling Shugborough Hall failing to enjoy the scenery! Big fan of the bovine locals though.
- Just chillin’
After that faffing start the rest of day 3 was less eventful – more of a challenging slog into a headwind that had developed overnight with the wind going up from a gentle 5 -6mph to 15-17mph which definitely made sure day 3 counted as a good training day. After a few hours beating upwind Warrington was in sight.
And eventually Mum and Dad were on hand to greet me at home for a couple of days good R&R
Stats for Day 3 – definitely slowing up into that headwind:
After a full recovery fuelled by beer, wine and pub food on a day out to the Lakes London eventually greeted me back at beautiful St. Pancras – one advantage of the bank holiday trains taking a cross-country route rather than the direct run into Euston
Richmond Rider 
Nice blog! Was a good read!