Bike-packing northwards - a man without a plan, and two new tents

It's been a while.   Weather, more weather and various commitments conspired to stop me going camping for many months.   I passed the time by watching camping videos and browsing camping websites, with inevitable results.   So I had some new gear to try out.  As soon as a few days without much rain were forecast, I set off.  The general idea was to head north, but also to see how I got on without a grand plan of where to stop, where to eat etc.   This actually worked reasonably well.

Day 1: Reading to Aynho

Caught a train to Reading to avoid the London sprawl, and almost immediately I was on the downs (and ups) of south Oxfordshire, on empty leafy lanes.  Brunch at Wallingford, where the ford across the river Walling has been replaced by a long single-lane bridge with traffic lights, not ideal on a heavily laden bike.  Then through chocolate-box villages on slightly flatter lanes as I headed north; a mid-afternoon snack from a Co-op in Wheatley was actually eaten in a very nice bus shelter at Kidlington.   I visited Somerton, where my uncle used to be rector of the church: vague memories of family visits there.    It was time to look for camp sites, and here the lack of planning started to become a bit of a problem.  There were none on my route, so a detour was called for, a bit of a shock as I rode along a busy and hilly A road for a few miles, ending up at a campsite in a pub at Clifton, near Aynho.   A campsite in a pub?  What's not to like?   Well, the pub was unfortunately shut on a Sunday evening, but the kind campsite lady served me a pint as she took my camping money, and I cooked a meal at the campsite.

Lanes north of Reading

Clifton Hampden

Ah yes, the new tents.   The first new tent was a bit of a disappointment, although my expectations were low.   Advertised on AliExpress as a two-person ultra-light tent for £2.87, I thought it was too good to be true, but also too good not to try.   When it turned up it was indeed ultra-light but not a tent.   A misleading page on AliExpress had different pictures of the different components, and I had unknowingly ordered a bag for tent pegs.   I complained to AliExpress about the misleading webpage, and they agreed and refunded my money - so I gained a free tent peg bag.  But I'd also been looking forward to my new tent for a few weeks, and this gained some momentum that led me to buy another tent, a Naturehike Mongar 2 man tent for about £90.  This was very much as advertised, very easy to set up and extremely roomy - you could actually get two people inside it quite easily, unlike most two-man tents.

Tent one

Tent two

Day 2:  Aynho to Haseley Knob

The day started well with another kind camper offering me a cup of tea.   He was a past cycle tourer and so we swapped stories about trips.   Another dry day, with another annoying headwind.  I was in Cotswold country, with villages of golden stone.  I meandered north towards Banbury, still on very quiet and scenic lanes.   A cafe in town provided a good breakfast, where I also smoked a couple of cigarettes, entirely by passive smoking.  To the north, I passed a bunch of colourful marquees, which I later realised was probably the Cropredy festival.   Nice countryside but not many cafes.  Eventually I found a village shop at Bishop's Itchington which had expanded into a lovely cafe.  Highly recommended.  I was now in Warwickshire, and maybe the character had changed from little winding lanes to rather straighter and faster roads, but still almost no traffic as I stayed off the main roads. 

Banbury

Shotteswell

The Offchurch Greenway, leading into Leamington

In the afternoon, I rode through beautiful Leamington Spa, but my route seemed to bypass the nice bits of Warwick through various housing estates.  Again I was a little bit stuck for camp sites, with the possibility of quite a long ride to two unpromising "camping parks".   Just then, I passed a dilapidated sign advertising B&B and camping, and my luck was in.  The elderly owner (even older than me) usually only accepted camper vans, but made an exception for me.  Warm showers and soft grass - and a pub a couple of miles down the road, serving beer but no food.

My meal that evening was not a great success.  I probably made a couple of mistakes cooking a dehydrated meal:  I didn't open the packet enough so didn't add enough water up to the measuring mark, and secondly, despite stirring well, there were some areas where I hadn't reached, meaning a very dry and partly powdery meal.  It was heavy going.

Day 3: Haseley Knob to Kidderminster

Part 2

Part 1

The campsite owner didn't do B&B any more since losing his wife, but recommended a cafe on the Grand Union Canal nearby at Hatton, a lovely spot to have breakfast, watching a few boats come past and chatting to the canal volunteers.  I planned to by-pass Birmingham to the south and west.  I was now heading west, directly into the wind and drizzle.  I was now in Worcestershire, which didn't impress me much.  The views were terrible, just grey everywhere.   The roads were still quiet, although rather lumpy and wet.  I stopped for 11s at a very busy bakery in Studley, where every other customer seemed to have a newborn baby.  It must have been something in the yeast.   Then just a few miles further on, I passed a Wetherspoons in Redditch and could not resist another stop.

Breakfast at Hatton top lock cafe

My Garmin had been playing up, refusing to give turn by turn directions and unhelpfully telling me it was 14,000 miles to my destination.  Struggling on westwards through Bromsgrove and eventually to Stourport-on-Severn, a nice looking town with a fiendish one-way system with many lanes.   It was quite hard to navigate on a bike, but I found a tea stop and started to think about camp sites.  The rain had stopped by now and the sun was out again.  I found my way onto the beautiful Staffs & Worcs canal, passed through Kidderminster without seeing much of it, and onto a campsite just to the north, at Wolverley.  It was a Camping and Caravanning Club site, which I was not looking forward to (since some sites don't accept non-members), but it was very welcoming and very reasonably priced (£13, special back-packer rate).   Also helpfully situated right by a canal-side pub which did great food.

Staffordshire & Worcestershire canal

Kidderminster from the canal

Day 4: Kidderminster to Wem

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

The day started well, as I accidentally found a community cafe right near the campsite, while looking for another one that was in fact shut.  The sun was shining, I was well-fed, and for the first time I had a tail wind to help me along.   I had to go over a rather large hill to get back into the Severn valley, and then up the Severn along NCN45, which started out enticingly flat and with a tarmac surface, but as soon as I left the Severn Valley Park, it turned into a cyclo-cross trail with annoying obstacles such as a ford and bicycle gates, just before 30% slopes.  It was impossible to get started to ride up them.   This rather lumpy track was following the Avon Valley Railway, but did not have the same smooth gradient.  I entered Shropshire somewhere around here, and after a while I came into Bridgnorth for a lunch in a tiny, excellent cafe.  Superb lemon meringue pie.  Bridgnorth is a very hilly town: one of the pavements I saw had a staircase on it.   

Crossing the Severn

Bridgnorth

Ironbridge

My original plan was to go to Telford, but I realised that the only reason I wanted to go there was to see Ironbridge, not quite the same place, so I revised my route to go to Ironbridge instead, following the river Severn upstream.  Ironbridge is a pretty place with the eponymous bridge, but very touristy.   I didn't stop long but instead headed for Shrewsbury, a beautiful city in the middle of a loop on the river.  Once again it has a difficult one-way system, which made it hard to explore on a bike.  Unfortunately I had a puncture on the way into town, and then couldn't satisfactorily inflate the replacement tube, so I was looking for a bike shop, a cafe, and also a campsite, and failed to find any of them, so I was a bit stressed.   Eventually I joined a nose-to-tail queue of traffic out of town to the north in the hope of finding an open bike shop, and succeeded.  The very friendly owner pumped up my tyre, which had been running at 20psi, told me about the Tesco Express just up the road, looked after my bike while I went to buy tea, and then stood and chatted with me as I ate it.  Thank you.

With two of my three needs satisfied, I had to find a campsite.  The only one nearby was a naturist site.  In my desperation, I wondered if they would accept clothed campers.   Would they have communal showers?   I had so many questions!   Luckily I found another site a bit further north which was OK, a family-oriented site, very different to the other sites I'd been on with lots of noise, and a cafe / disco serving beer and jumbo hot dogs.

Day 5: Wem to Delamere

By now I'd decided that my destination for this ride would be Chester, and then back to Crewe to catch the train home.   I headed north; 11s at Whitchurch, passed from Shropshire to Cheshire somewhere around here; and continued north on rather undulating roads until I joined the Shropshire Union Canal taking me into the heart of Chester, a very lovely city with lots to see, including a particularly nice Wetherspoons, the Square Bottle.  Somehow I again found it hard to sight-see with a loaded bike: the one-way system didn't go the way I wanted it (I guess it's designed to get all the traffic out of town) and walking any distance is not easy with panniers etc.

Cheshire countryside house

Entry to Chester

Chester

So after seeing some of the city, I reminded myself that I was on a cycling trip and got back on the bike heading east, and another Camping & Caravanning Club site near a lake at Delamere.   Another lovely site with a pub just down the road but some very rowdy geese that kept flying around overhead rather noisily at nightfall.  It was quite comical: just as soon as the squawking died down, another flock would fly over - or maybe it was the same one doing training circuits.   A very warm night, I don't think the temperature got below about 20 degrees.

One of three beautiful old foot bridges
at Hockenhull Platts nature reserve

I later discovered that these bridges are part of a medieval road from London to Holyhead: "Platts Lane was once a segment of the medieval road stretching from London to Holyhead. In 1353, Edward, the Black Prince, upon crossing the bridges, decreed that 20 shillings be allocated for their maintenance. By the 17th century, the road's condition had deteriorated to such an extent that posts were embedded within it to obstruct cart traffic, rendering it passable only to pedestrians and horseback riders. Consequently, goods were transported in processions of packhorses under the guidance of a driver, or jagger, on foot. Notable crossings include the journey of Celia Fiennes, an early female explorer, over the bridges in 1698, and that of Thomas Pennant in 1780. Hockenhull Platts, Tarvin, Cheshire, England."

Day 6:  Delamere to Crewe and home

I planned to ride to nearby Crewe via Winsford and Nantwich.   I had about 30 miles to ride and all day to do it, since I'd booked a very cheap ticket leaving Crewe at 17.15.

Winsford was a great disappointment, being defined by the massive A54 and a few industrial buildings.   Maybe I missed the nice bit.   But Nantwich is lovely, so I was able to idle away an hour there.  Eventually I gave up exploring by bike and locked the bike while I walked around trying (in vain) to find a suitable cafe, before riding across to Crewe for more time-wasting and catching the train to London, all very smooth.

Nantwich

The trip was planned using the cycle.travel website, and I found it very easy to use on a phone.  It seems to pick routes that are very suitable for me (it has settings for how much off-road you like etc), and it's very easy to update routes on the go and to save them to Garmin Connect, which in turn transfers them to a Garmin.   There's also a cycle.travel app, which I think allows you to navigate directly from your phone, but I haven't tried that.   I used ukcampsite.co.uk to find campsites each night, and that seemed to work well.  It was all pretty successful.  About 340 miles and 4,600m of climbing.

Post Script:   on the train home from Waterloo, I shared a bike space with a young chap with a mountain bike.   He saw my panniers and asked about my trip.  It turns out that he is a keen bike tourer and has ridden all over the world on multi-month trips.   He had loads of fascinating stories.  This year he is thinking of re-visiting Africa to ride up the Nile to Ethiopia, and also doing a circuit of the Himalayas, trying to make Nepal as the 100th country he's visited.   Maybe I still have a few things to aspire to.