The riders who started this stage were Adrian (his second stage), Luke (his first stage) and me. This was the stage that Chris Boardman was going to join us and for that reason we'd routed the stage via The Wirral >more.
This felt like quite a detour when I planned it but you can see from the map that it wasn't much of a detour at all. Later in the ride I was to meet other cyclists and they described the bit south of Preston as the 'least enjoyable'. Well it certainly wasn't the case for us. This stage was really pleasant and pretty flat as you can see. I'm really pleased we took in The Wirral and the Mersey ferry.
A guy called Ken had seen this website and met us off the ferry in Liverpool. You could tell by his legs that he was a serious cyclist! Anyway he was incredibly hospitable and took us at a leisurely pace and off-road and on cycle paths all the way to Southport via the Crosby beach with Anthony Gormley's iron statues on it (I will put some photos of these in the P-Ride Photo Album shortly). Form here we could see Blackpool Tower across the bay.
Ken really added so much to the afternoon ride with his local knowledge. It made me think that, with sufficient planning time and promotion, this participation ride concept would really work. With local people joining in the different stages and guiding you through 'their' patch.
The lads rounded to day off with a couple of pints and a nice meal in Preston. Adrian was to get the train back home after breakfast in the morning.
Download log file (text format): S07D05.log
Download track file (Magellan MapSend format): S07D05.log
Only stage today
Distance (miles): 90.61
Saddle time (hh:mm:ss): 6:39:30
Average speed (mph): 13.61
Max speed (mph): 31.3
Cumulative distance (miles): 487.01
Notes:
Click on the images above to see them full size.
For details of how vertical profiles were derived from log files and the structure of the log files see this posting.
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