Tangled Metal wrote:I thought wiggo lives Chorley way. Could be wrong but I bet he used to head up that way on rides out when training.
I took the family for a ride in the area last year. It had been probably 20 years since I'd ridden on Bowland. I used to ride out on school holidays from Mellor way with a mate. A ride to Ribchester in the morning then back for lunch at home and back out via Whalley in the afternoon. I wasn't that fit but still got out a lot. A couple of three hour rides on occasion. An easy day was only 2 hours. Still, it's a nice ride via back lanes. I quite liked getting through dunsop Bridge and round to Slaidburn. On occasion I'd pass through Whalley and up that steep route to reservoirs that starts with a kind of sharp, steep turn straight off the main road. Then round to come back over the tops to Mellor.
The ribble valley, Bowland and east of it is really nice cycling. Never used to be busy back then. A very quiet place. Last time I rode it with family it was a bit unpleasant at times on some roads. We just took a few quieter backroads which meant the ride was a bit long for us.
The Queen has quite a lot of land there too. In our family some members are cycling through near Clitheroe when serious security personnel told them to move off the main road down a side road. Other cyclist didn't have that. Then they must have looked dodgy. The Queen then came past in a convoy of range rovers at speed. A former colleague used to run one of the queen's public houses as the tenant. She has one up there and iirc Cornwall has another of hers. IIRC she only has 3 pubs.
Bowland in all of it's quarters has some delicious cycling, including the Salter Fell Road through the middle, once a rite of passage for rough-stuffers of the area but now a bit tame with hardened tracks. It used to be one long bog!
My own memories of rides in Bowland are several and various. It was straight out the house and into it for nearly 30 years, unlike the Lakes and Dales rides, which needed 15 miles to get there first (and another 15 after leaving them, on the way back). From Lancaster there are many fine rides via any number of permutations of the lanes of Bowland, none of them more than about 60 miles unless one zigs and zags all over.
There's quite a good one that does most of the large Bowland climbs via a zig-zag route: circa 100 miles and nearly 3000M of climbing. I've done it but once and was thoroughly knackered. A lot of those climbs contain both length and severely steep parts. It's the latter that do for you, after about the tenth major heave.
The traffic is sporadic. On school holidays there can be quite a few townies unused to the narrow lanes, bad cambers and broken verges. Many of the roads are in a terrible state and have been for donkeys - a fit place for a gravel bike.
I avoided the back road from Chipping to near Dunsop Bridge in the hols, for example, as there's the Wild Boar play thingy up there, visited by the nuclear families, in droves, driving like fools. At other times one sees no car at all. Same with any route past The Inn at Whitewell.
I am minded to post some photos.....
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes