Canal Biking

With a cheeky couple of days off in the middle of the week, there was inevitably going to be some riding to tell you about.

I set out to try a new concept in the form of Canal Boat Biking. That sounds like a grand concept for what was really just an opportunity to ride a bit of bike and also catch up with a friend.

The plan was to meet with the canal boat on the Monday night and then cruise the waterways for a day of locks, excellent sandwiches, and beer, mooring up on the Tuesday evening before finding an interesting, if not totally direct, route back on the bike.

Part one went decidedly well and I set off from just outside Rugby in the fog of Wednesday morning on the bike. The thing with canal boats is that you don't travel very far so I was quietly confident that the ride back would be fairly quick. I had planned a route that I hoped would take in some bridleways and canals.

In the end the ride was one of the most frustrating I have done in a while. To start with the bridleways were a collection of ploughed fields, torn-up pastoral land, and bad signposting. Often there was a vague arrow at one side of a field, then a tiring thrash through a rough field to hope to find another, which may be on the next gate, or may not turn up for a few uncertain gates, all of which were as likely to be locked as not. So already a tiring and irritating ride full of wrong turns and the full-body effort of riding rough grassland and ploughed fields.

It was turning into a real slog of a ride over what clearly isn't popular mountain biking territory, and that was before the added impact of the time of year. In addition to ploughing it appears to be the perfect time to cut hedgerows, and the softer green spikes of the Spring are now on the ground and hardened up. Three separate flat tyres slowed me down further, and in all I counted eight different punctures in the course of fixing them.

It was still nice to be on the bike, but perhaps it was the wrong area for my new mountain biking concept. I was pleased to get to the car after four hours in the saddle and set off on the 25 minute drive to catch up with the boat's day and a half of cruising, in order to collect the clothes and bedding I had not been able to carry on the bike.

Sports Tracker is still down as I write this so you'll have to wait for the map of my frustration. I promise you it as soon as I am able, and until then how about a bit of a tease for Rampage?

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