Training Part 3

The 24th March was supposed to be our Cheshire Cat ride.  The weather had been gradually turning worse as the week went by.  A frustrating decision by the organisers to postpone the event left us wondering what to do.  Now we wouldn't get to climb the famous Mow Cop, maybe thats a good thing looking at how steep it is...

Us being us thought we'd still go out.  A quickly mapped route to Hebden Bridge so we could tackle the longest climb in the country was also postponed as the weather just didn't seem to improve.

So we decided to keep off the big climbs and head out towards the coast where the chances of snow would be, hopefully, less.
It started out alright but then, at the back of Parbold Hill, we climbed Stoney Lane.  This is a good climb thats a lot safer than the scary Parbold Hill.  Scary as the traffic is quite quick along the road.
The road was fine at the start but then we came across a couple of abandoned cars and this

Needless to say we set no Strava records!!!

This weather was really strange.  One minute we would be cycling along on dry roads, then you would turn a corner and bam, a snow drift would block the road.  Just daft.
And then we hit mechanical trouble in Ormskirk.  Pedalling down towards some traffic lights I couldn't get any drive.  The cassette went so I could freewheel both directions!  What could we do?  How would we get back to Leyland?
A quick phone call to Ric's wife Di and it was arranged that we would meet her at the Morrissons we had just passed.  Poor Di had only just got up!!  Oops!
A push and depressing walk to Morrissons which wasn't quite open - can't believe how many people were queuing for the doors to open on a Sunday morning!  We locked the bikes up and Ric just happened to suggest I try the cassette again.  It worked. I had drive!  How, I don't know, but it was working! 
A quick call to Di to cancel the recovery ( Sorry Di! ) and we then set off back home after having a quick brew ( although the flaming frothy milk in the coffee machine wasn't working either - must be the weather ).
So, just in case we had another breakdown, we pushed for home in some strong winds.

Flat open roads head on into a wind is just relentless.  Its harder than climbing sometimes and quickly tires you out.

Having had my bike serviced by Wyre Cycles earlier in the week, I was a bit annoyed at the mechanical failure, but, as it turned out the failure was rider error!  Silly me, if you note from the above photo, stuck my bike in the snow to take the pic.  What seems to have happened is the snow has got into the cassette and froze causing whatever is inside these parts to not work correctly.  Obviously by the time we had walked back to Morrissons it had defrosted enough to work Ok.

Wally!