Day 6 - Ludlow to Winsford

We set out with a long day ahead of us. Ludlow had been lovely, well worth a return visit some day. Full of lots of pretty buildings, but when Christine wandered around the evening before it seemed one of the quietest places she had been, as there was no-one about.

Today was a bit of a respite from the hill-climbing of the previous days. We rolled along the gently undulating roads and covered 32km in the first 2 hours. Usually we reckon on doing something in the region of 10km per hour when you take into account stops for water and examining maps etc. Today's route is here and below.

Actual Day 6

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The main downside was that it was along the A49 so there were plenty of lorries and cars going too fast. Why haven’t they got the patience to wait for just a few seconds?? Oh no. It’s a blind corner/brow of a hill, but if I slow down behind the cyclist I might take an extra 15 seconds to reach my destination so I’ll overtake anyway, and risk colliding with an oncoming vehicle. We did encounter a couple of steep hills near the end. Revenge for Stephen declaring it was really flat and that you couldn’t see any hills, so a 10% incline appeared out of nowhere. Christine was pushing her bike up, the road was narrow and the lorry driver sounded his horn. What was she supposed to do - leap into the hawthorn hedge?

After 28 miles we rolled down into Shrewsbury. Stephen had a flat tyre. The second and eventually he managed to find a tiny piece of glass embedded in the rubber. We found a lovely Tudor building which gave him cover as he replaced the inner tube. Shropshire was very pretty. We even cycled past a timbered church with a thatched roof.



Fortunately after Shrewsbury it was on to quieter roads through Wem and around Whitchurch and then Nantwich where we had hoped to stay, but everything had been booked. Christine thought they said it was the cheese show, but signs just said it was the Nantwich show tomorrow. At least we avoided all the traffic for that! Unfortunately that meant we had to cycle on a further 10 miles to Winsford, which turned out to be nowhere near as pretty as Ludlow. As we reached the end of the over 70 mile day it started to rain a bit, and is now raining hard. We were lucky to just get caught in one sharp shower today. Let’s hope tomorrow’s forecast of heavy rain all day is wrong!!