DAY 9: Shivering ducks and Jimi Hendrix

All Stretton to Chester – 56 miles

As well as morganisation, there’s another new word that has entered our vocabulary during this trip: komooted. It refers to the ordeal of being sent down (or even worse ‘up’) some stony track totally unsuited to pannier-laden bicycles by our navigation app Komoot. I have to admit that even though of its features are intensely annoying, Komoot is 95% reliableIt. It generally takes us along routes that are more or less friendly to cyclists and it always gets us to our destination. I can’t even imagine navigating by paper map any more. So much time must be eaten up wondering where you are and where you went wrong. With Komoot, you just have to follow the blue line, and when you mess up a little blue dot pinpoints your position. Easy.

Until you get komooted, which is what happened to us towards the end of our journey to Baz’s place in All Stretton (Komoot journeys invariably have a sting in the tail).

Komoot often sucks you in by choosing a route that seems entirely reasonable at first, maybe a little gravelly but definitely passable. Then, just when you’ve travelled too far to contemplate turning back, said track morphs into a muddy little lane traversing a jungle that even a walker might balk at. So it was that we found ourselves trying to cycle up a fairly steep hill over rocks and tree trunks, slipping, sliding, and cursing the day Komoot was born. Eventually, we were forced to dismount and push our bikes, which aren’t exactly the featherweight road bikes of legend, up a steepening gradient, our legs lashed by nettles and brambles and our breath and patience fast running out.

After the glade of hell, our route took us over a series of wide open fields full of sheep and then down into another field where there was a large and very strange tent, a cross between a marquee and a wigwam. Right at the entrance to the field we saw a sheep lying on the grass looking very very dead. As we entered the field, two 4x4s drove away from the tent and down the track. It was all very curious.

I took a picture of a pond full of white ducks and we carried on down the hill where, mercifully, the path morphed back into a cyclable track. Further along we past a cluster of caravans, including a very fine and comfortable looking Silverstream with fire, pots, pans, armchairs, drying clothes clustered around its entrance. It looked like a permanent dwelling. A very cheerful woman came out of one of the other caravans and showed us the way down to the road below. Our Komoot ordeal was over.

I woke up at Baz’s place groggy from a poor night’s sleep. The sky was a creamy grey over furzy Welsh hills. For breakfast we ate the leftovers of Tim’s jolof rice. If anything, they tasted better than the night before, and I reflected how well a solid plate of savoury food sets you up for a day’s cycling, compared to the sugary fare we often opt for in the UK.

The elevation profile of the day’s ride looked kind, but for some reason we all felt below par, with energy levels struggling to reach the required intensity. Maybe it was the grey skies, maybe the cold, maybe it was lack of sleep (which was strange in itself because generally, we’ve been sleeping like navvies after a twelve hour shift).

The route took us on a long glide off the Welsh hills interspersed with the occasional sharp and unwelcome climb. Coming into Shrewsbury, we were forced to do a stretch on the A49 which was loud and hair-raising. In these situations, you have to concentrate hard on avoiding any wobble or sudden movement that might take you out of the narrow space you occupy at the edge of the road. We passed a large group of old bikers in their leathers riding soupled up choppers. One of them was very large, and once he’d passed, Phil said ‘Unzip him and he’ll explode.’ That cheered us up.

I persuaded the crew that we needed a truly excellent cup of coffee and I googled the best place in Shrewsbury, which turned out to be The House Coffee Company. Getting there entailed a long glide off our path and down Longden road into the town centre. The further down the hill we went, the more guilty I felt to have created such a lengthy diversion. But the coffee was good, as were the cakes and scones and Phil’s well stacked bacon sandwich.

Before leaving we stocked up on wine gums at the Spar opposite. Wine gums had become our sugar high of choice. Then we heaved our weary limbs back up the hill and north on the main road. It’s always a relief when you finally turn off the main road and onto a side road, preferably a smooth well-tarred single track road. You can relax, look around and let your mind wander.

Our lunch break in Ellesmere promised much but delivered little. Jools had explained the difference between Ellesmere Port and Ellesmere, and I was intrigued by the little town on the shores of its pleasure lake. But the only place serving proper food was large overpriced lakeside restaurant with too many Covid restrictions and rules, so we bought dry, uninspiring cheese sandwiches and coffee from a kiosk and ate them sheltering from the cold wind behind a dilapidated boat house. Even the ducks seemed to be shivering as they paddled by on the lake, between us and a little mess of wild vegetation with the strange name of ‘Moscow Island’.

The onward landscape was flat and anonymous under the grey skies. Little villages fell behind us: Penley, Thrapwood, Shocklach, Farndon, Aldford. Eventually, with relief, we glided down Chester Road and Dee Banks, with the wide sweep of the Dee to our left and Chester old town in the distance. Jools had to catch a train to stay with his family in Birkenhead, so we rode towards the station through little streets of terraced houses, then along the canal past old warehouses, some of them still boarded up and waiting for to be reborn.

As we turned down Bridge St, we had our first real sight of the wonder that is old Chester, with it’s ancient ‘rows’, or shopping streets on two levels, the upper one accessed by old stairs and balustraded walkways. As we cycled into the old town we heard a raucous blare of partying coming from one of the pubs and further down the restaurants and clubs were all alive with pleasure-seekers. I liked Chester immediately.

I’d booked the Saddle Inn in a rush, as a replacement for our camping pitch at Chester Lakes. The entrance was down a cobbled side alley of old houses, in an intriguing neighbourhood off a dual carriageway that dissects the town, smacking of 1970s traffic rationalisation schemes. The tiny reception area lead to a pub that was decked out like a shrine to rock n roll. We stored our bikes in a little gig room, with drums and amps set up ready for that weekend’s show. Our bed room – the Jimi Hendrix suite – was above the pub, up a very narrow flight of stairs. My apprehension about the size of the room disappeared as soon as we opened the door and walked into a large airy space, with one massive double bed and two singles. Above the double hung an old fender guitar, and pictures of Hendrix adorned the opposite wall. The shower curtain in the bathroom was a Hendrix extravaganza in rainbow colours.

After showering we went down to the pub for our arrival ritual of a pint or two and a smoke. It was always one of the happiest moments of the day. And there couldn’t have been a better place to land than the Saddle Inn. The pulling handles on the bar were in the shape of Fender guitar necks. The landlady and bar woman were welcoming, easy going and funny. In the tiny office by the hotel entrance there were two tiny French pugs with beautiful grey velvet skin who leapt straight up like grasshoppers every time you walked past.

Around 8pm, too late it as it turned out, we left the hotel to find something to eat. Place after place greeted us with ‘sorry, kitchen closed’. We wandered the old streets for a while and finally, in the ancient district of St Werburghs, came across Sergio’s. Some eateries that call themselves ‘Italian’ are really just skin deep. Sergio’s was Italian to the core, from the maitre D, to all the waiters and waitresses, to the food which was genuine, copious and delicious and quickly. The place had the feel of an institution, one of those places that seems to run almost automatically, on tried and tested principles that seem to have existed forever. Maybe even Roman times.

Back at the hotel, I was determined to read at least page of the paperback I had lugged all the way from Land’s End: The Waves by Virginia Woolf. I couldn’t even manage a sentence before my plan was aborted by the sound of steady snoring – my own.

Andy Morgan.