The table was reserved with this notice, so at least we were also able to sit down.
This morning's view I think shows how housing shapes the way we live.
It is again early, we have been waking much earlier than expected, between 6 and 6:30 every day.
This picture shows the detail of some of the chimneys opposite.
They don't make them like that anymore. Lots of new houses have false chimneys fitted just for show.
The Sycamore guest house was very nice and Chris could not be more helpful, and cooking a great breakfast.
Steve met us in the morning and cycled into the centre of Chester with us to see us on our way. Which was a nice touch, and I hope Sarah did not mind.
We were also glad that the concierge had looked after Steve's bike for the night, it did look nice and clean again. Ours were still dirty having been kept in the garage overnight.
Today was a hard day of 72 miles, through lots of town and along busy roads.
We firstly went through Chester, then Runcorn, St. Helens, Skelmersdale, all of which are outlying towns from Liverpool. After a small amount of countryside we reach Leyland and Preston again busy towns. From Preston we then slowly climbed for 20 miles out to Slaidburn in the foothills of the Pennines.
This links to most of the map for today, it misses off the last 20 miles.
http://g.co/maps/gxtbg
Today we have cycled on :
Busy A road dual carriageways,
Busy A roads,
B roads,
Over bridges,
Through housing estates,
Non-metalized roads,
On cycle paths,
Bridle ways (named Four Acre Lane),
Farm tracks,
Old tram ways,
Old railway lines,
Across fords and
Down a river.
Here are pictures of some of them.
After leaving Chester we passed through Helsby which is where my brother and I had spent a term at the local school.
Now seeing Helsby, I had not realised that there was a large hill behind it, it would have been good to have gone up to the top.
We stopped in Preston for a late lunch at this very old bakery, apart from the toilets, according to Ray, is was very good. we had a baked potato, bacon Barm (which meant a large roll), flap jacks and milk shakes.
We stayed under the cover outside the café until the rain stopped, which meant that we hardly got wet at all today. Although we did stop a couple of times to put waterproofs on and off.
Once we left Preston we headed into the Pennine hills and again had fantastic views.
One of the views we were not expecting was this of a keen farmer that had a dislike to moles digging up his field. Not really sure what harm a mole does to a sheep field.
After a few steep ups and downs, on which Ray achieved 44.3mph, I was too scared! We reached our diggs in the YHA at Slaidburn.
As we have to cook breakfast for ourselves tomorrow we nipped to the local shop across the road, and stocked up with bacon, duck eggs, bread and milk for the morning.
Tonight's dinner will be in the pub, where we hope to see Dave, and I hope they have wifi so that I can send this as there is absolutely no phone signal again.
There was no wifi, there router was broken, even their pay phone did not work.
Cheers
Paul
Riding the length of the UK so you don't have to ;)
You can sponsor me at
https://www.justgiving.com/Margaret-beattie
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