Day 5 - The Road To Wigan/Widnes/Warrington

We left the new town named after Thomas Telford, the inventor of the roundabout, and caught the tail end of the morning rush hour. After that the A49 seemed to be full of trucks, although they provided some shelter from strong crosswinds.

Fortunately today was the closest we've been so far to having a tail wind, which got us to over 50 miles by lunchtime. The day was also dry, so maybe the weather's turning in our favour.

Warrington and Wigan felt like a continuous conurbation of congestion for about 30 miles of traffic lights. The only good thing about Warrington was that the long descent into it didn't have a corresponding climb on the other side. We realised that the area was pretty rough, as even the police station was boarded up.

Somewhere on a four-lane roundabout in one of the towns beginning with W, Nigel's pannier fell off, but luckily he retrieved it before it go squashed, so his muffins didn't suffer any damage.

We took a brief stop in Wigan to use toilets in fast food restaurants t, and used the benches of the pedestrianised area as a picnic table. I'd love to say we really wanted to stay longer, but when the local busker fired into Petula Clarke's "Downtown", it was definitely time to move on. Read into that rich description of Wigan town centre what you will.

Buying post-ride yoghurt drinks in Preston took three attempts, although this didn't slow our progress as much as the earlier traffic. Soon after leaving there we reached our destination for the evening, right beside our route, and with a pub for our meal directly opposite.

One worrying thing is that the water of the Lancashire Canal is higher than our room, and only a few metres away, so you'll be able to work out what's happened if this blog doesn't go any further ...

The evening has been spent planning ways to save weight for tomorrows 18 mile ascent to Shap. Suggestions so far include:

• Make sure one's bowels are clear.


• Clip toenails.


• Have a shave.


• Throw away un-fixable punctured inner tube.


• Throw away *all* packaging


• Make Patrick eat the extra 500g jar of jam he couldn't resist in an unmissable 2 for 1 offer.


• Sneak dense items into Patrick's bag while he's asleep.


• Don't steal 10 muffins and 5 bananas from Holiday Inn.

Julian's statoids - Day Five
Daily Distance: 97 miles
Cumulative Distance: 413.5 miles
Ride time: 6 hours 19 mins
Top Speed: 37.9.6 mph
Average speed: 15.3 mph
Calories Burned - 4500
Terrain - Mostly flat
Key Events: Nigel's flying pannier