Liverpool docks ride and spiney Norman

2.5 Weeks to go!! we are ready as we'll ever be!
Thankyou for your kind donations!

Spiney Norman

This is spiney Norman, he wasnt happy about having his photo taken at 6:43am the other day as i rode to work, but who is? Do you think he looks ill? My hedgehog knowledge is limited.
(we are broadening our range of topics to get more readers! ha ha ha)

Anway enough of that heres some pics from when we rode to Liverpool Docks on saturday:

the bikes - nearly fully laden

Steve and the Royal Liver Building

Four lanes of traffic enough for ya?!

This ride was very different to our usual ones, the turn around point being Liverpool city centre. Dockland industrial estate is a change from country lanes! Preston, Bretherton, Ormskirk, Maghull, Bootle, Docks, Crosby, Little Altcar, Southport, Preston.
Heres the route we did:
http://www.bikemap.net/route/984944#

Avoiding switch island, and bad main roads, 73 miles overall. Out from 7:30am till about 3pm, we always average 10mph door to door with stops and lunch included in that. We started off into a headwind, this was horrible, carried on for about 3 hrs! All part of the training. Arrived at the waterfront got a bacon butty and cup of tea. It was all pretty damn flat, roads were decent too, apart from one in the centre they were resurfacing, had scraped it back exposing old cobble stones.

good butty van (and Liver Bldg)

Isle of Mann ferry and one big un from Rotterdam.
Ferry bloke nearly fell over when we told him we had come from Preston and were going back!

Steve has discovered Banana Malt Loaf - highly reccommended! Also munching wine gums is all part of the training too.

Merseyside Maritime Museum - no cycling allowed round here

Wheel of Liverpool 

I broke a bracket on my mudguard, it now interferes with my tyre every so often, not good, solved temporarily with tie wrap!

We went out Sunday aswell, did 44miles, windy and rainy. Went to Bolton then Wigan. It was alright, saturday ride was better, legs felt ok too.

We are ready to go now, fairly happy doing big miles day after day, just finalising gear lists and making final prep.
Going to do a service on the bikes shortly aswell.
Weve worked out that for our outgoing train, one of the train change overs is 12 minutes, a bit tight?

Cheers for now
DB
:)