Saturday, October 14 – Castle Mill

We were ready today at 2.10pm and taking the usual short cut towards Warrington, we got into our pace. Alas! Just ten minutes later I was pulling a one inch nail out of my rear tyre. It took only seven minutes to mend it and we were off again. Walkden, Worsley and Patricroft swiftly faded away, but a large merchant ship coming up the Manchester Ship Canal held us up for some time. At Sale a collision between two motor cars was attracting a lot of people, and the police were busy when we passed.

From Altrincham we reached Hale Barns and Ringway, and a little further on we turned into a maze of bylanes which eventually took us down a sharp hill, over a stile and we were at Castle Mill. ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ met us on all sides, but one has to wink at some of these, so soon we were enjoying an ample repast. Myriads of midges pestered us, so to escape these unwelcome attentions we had a wash in the river. My collar stud now took the evil opportunity to go missing, and an exhaustive search failed to yield the elusive stud, so I had to find a substitute. Leaving the lovely Vale behind us we mounted the hill and started for Wilmslow. It was an excellent run in the gathering twilight although it became rather cold. One thing that struck me were the sudden waves of hot air that we ran through. After one and a half hours at Wilmslow we took the well known route back, arriving home at 10pm.

48 miles, 7.75 hours