Thursday 12 November 2015

Day 16 Stone to Nuneaton

Another early start in the dark. I raided the batteries of the dead camera and the headlamp was invigorated. Within half an hour I'd reached Sandon Lock with over 4km on the clock, then the towpath reverted to type. At one point a herd of cows had broken through the fence, so the grass was nicely cut, but pugged with deep hoof prints; I juddered along, teeth rattling and dreaming of suspension forks. I crept along slowly but surely towards Fradley Junction and the turn-off onto the Coventry Canal some 30km away.
It was another clear day, with a nip in the air: the first cold start since Loch Awe. For a couple of K's at Great Haywood, where the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal branched off, the towpath was perfect, then it was back to mud as I headed towards Rugeley. An improvement heralded the arrival of that town, but I had the first puncture of the day, the fifth of the trip. The path then deteriorated for a while, and became two thin ruts and the wheels were spoilt for choice. The front wheel took the lefthand rut while the rear went for right, and I went flying into a hedge. It was an improvement on landing in the canal.
A little further on was an ugly factory, with walls that rose straight out of the canal, like some moated fortification. Beyond this the towpath came good and I bombed along to Handsacre where I pulled off and crossed over a bridge to try and get a coffee at the Crown Inn. It was closed, so I headed back onto the towpath and sped along, soon passing an ugly factory rising straight from the canal, then spotting skid marks where some idiot had fallen off his bike. With a rapidly developing  sense of deja vu, I checked with a dog walker: "Yes you'll soon be in Rugeley". Bloody hell I'd gone the wrong way up the towpath and added an extra 4km to the day. I pedalled and cursed my way back to Handsacre. The pub was still shut.
20 minutes later I was at Fradley Junction and went into the Swan Inn. The chef wouldn't be in for another 40 minutes, but the barmaid was brilliant and made me a pile of sandwiches. At the junction I turned onto the Coventry Canal, though it's also known as the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal at this point thanks to a confusing series of ownership changes. At Whittington I had another back wheel puncture, then it was on to the Tamworth canal interchange at Fazeley. The Coventry Canal headed north-west then swung south through Polesworth where progress became somewhat intermittent: I had four punctures in as many kilometres.
To make matters worse, ominous clouds were building up: Storm Abigail, Britain's first named storm, was gathering. I don't know why we'd started naming storms; it just encourages them. With imminent inundation a distinct possibility I pumped as much air as I could into the tyre as I could and set off like a thing possessed. A kilometre later, just through Mancetter I had to  repump, and right where I stopped there was an info board about this being the spot where 4000 Romans slaughtered 70000 Iceni and pals led by Boudica. No wonder I was getting so many punctures, bloody brooch pins and spear points everywhere.
The next pumping got me twice as far,and I could pick out the distinctive outline of Mount Jud on Hartshill Ridge. It has a classic Mount Fuji-like outline, not bad at all for a slag heap.The next pump took me three kilometres and I began to wonder if by some miracle the tyre was healing itself.  At the Cat Gallows Bridge in Nuneaton I turned off the canal, and 5 minutes later reached my parent's home, bang on 5pm, a ten hour day for just 84km.
Day stats 84km  165 Metres of ascent
Off road 80km 
A road 0km 
B road  0km 
Unclassified road 0.5km Doesn't include the deja vu section!