Lone ride from Aldcliffe to Aldcliffe via Jubilee Tower – Saturday, 25th April, 2020

Usually I get off the sofa and get on a road bike to ride with other people. I enjoy the company on the road and look forward to drinking Earl Grey tea and eating a slice of bakewell tart sociably with friends. So I’ve found it difficult to get riding since the lockdown. I’ve taken a couple of rides to Garstang to buy fish that have involved going over Harris End fell one way or the other. But despite the weather being perfect for cycling I’ve mainly rather stuck to the sofa.

Yesterday though, I decided to follow a ride I’ve done on my own a few times in the past but not for a year or two. Out to Galgate via Condor Green, towards the hills through Street and onto the fellside road to Marshaw at the bottom of Catshaw and Hawthornthwaite fells. The sky was blue with a slight haze but I had a good view back towards Lancaster. If you listen very carefully to the beginning of my little video you can hear a cuckoo. He’s almost drowned out by the willow warbler singing his pretty falling cadence and they both are by the swoosh of an unknown cyclist coming by. He was one of half a dozen cyclists I saw on that road – and just one car. There were a couple of lapwings in the field doing aerial acrobatics with tight turns and swoops that they matched with their swooping calls that are far more complex than their nick name of ‘peewit’ suggests. And there were some shelducks being harassed by a pigeon. And a few martins – I think they were sand martins – as I crossed the Cam Brook before the short but steep pull up to Cam Brow.

I carried on, crossed the Marshaw Wyre and turned back towards Lancaster on the Trough road. I’d forgotten the steep descent into Lee and met a DPD van with a bit of speed coming across the bridge. Luckily it was wide enough for us to miss each other safely. And then there was the long climb up to and along Rakehouse Brow. The road was quiet and the views across the Fylde glorious and I’d promised myself a chew bar and a breather at Jubilee Tower. Of course there were a number of cyclists doing the same, socially distanced along the roadside, but I found my own tussock with a view towards the Lakeland fells. A couple of swallows darted overhead as I enjoyed my snack.

I’d forgotten how long the descent is from the Tower down through Quernmore to Condor Mill. Wonderful! A free ride. Quernmore was surprisingly busy and I did have to brake quite a lot to stay behind a car at one point. But it was just as well because the road surface has been rucked up like a loose rug as it goes through the dog leg and it gets scarily bouncy. Up the other side, I turned left at the top before Langthwaite to ride the big dipper along the side of the fell to Blea Tarn Road and then turned down through Hala. I missed out my usual return to Aldcliffe along the canal to avoid mixing with all the walkers and runners failing to socially distance and took the less pretty route via Lunecliffe Road. Back in time for lunch. Not the same as a CTC ride… but it got me out of the home I’ve been told by the government to stay in, for a couple of hours. And I saw and heard the signal birds of summer; cuckoo, willow warbler and swallow.

Tim Dant