Ronny's traveller blog

I traveled to Northumberland (in the north of England, almost on the Scottish border) for an event at the end of March. The week after the event I took leave to explore a little more of England. This is the fifth day of the bicycle tour.

Also on Thursday morning the accommodation didn’t have breakfast, but that was fine with me. So I had breakfast out of my backpack and was looking forward to a café for the second breakfast. The start of the tour was pleasant: dry, downhill, along small roads and finally along an old railway track. Unfortunately the drizzle was already starting there, and the rain radar indicated that putting on the rain jacket would be worth it. The profile remained pleasant up to Ashton-under-Lyne and Stalybridge, then the first hills of the Peak District set in. On the second climb I look at the map to see if I could take a flatter route. However, having to cross a lot of rivers would have meant I would probably have had a lot of ups and downs and so I stayed on the route into the Peak District.

At least the rain stopped in Glossop. I tried to avoid the main road a bit more, which allowed me to stay in the beautiful valley of the Glossop brook, but the dirt track was a bit muddy than I had hoped. The road was pretty empty after all, with only a few cars a minute, which I learned as soon as I went on it.

Reaching this pass released some feelings of happiness, as I experienced with all the passes before. The view was a bit dreary though, very grey. The ride into the valley was great, for a long time it was downhill, first a bit steep, then a bit flatter towards the reservoir. There were few houses and no café. I hadn’t seen any in Old Glossop and I was getting hungry.

I knew from friends that there should be a café near the reservoir, but I learned there that it was a bit further away than I thought. Luckily downstream. But first it got wet again from above. It was already lunchtime when I finally got to the café. And since I was hungry I took the extra large Full English Breakfast. I didn’t see the cakes until I paid, a normal breakfast and cakes would certainly have been also delicious.

When I left it was still cloudy and I was expecting rain, but instead the sun came out. Shortly thereafter I packed away the rain gear and a little later even switched to shorts. That was unexpected (and as of this writing, it’s still the only time this year).

The roads in the Derwent Valley (still the same valley since the Snake Pass) looked pretty busy on the map, so I chose the small roads on the ridge. But for that I had to climb a bit again. And again a sign said the road in front of me was closed, but I was lucky this time too. And got this amazing view:

The wind came from the side, so it helped at times and sometimes made the path more difficult. The outlook remained interesting. I saw a rain cloud coming my way and was able to wait for it in a somewhat sheltered spot (and change back to long pants). Overall I found the constant ups and downs tiring and was surprised to see in the elevation profile that I was going down more than up. In the middle of the afternoon I found another wall for the second lunch. That’s where I booked the accommodation for Derby when it became clear that I wasn’t going to get any further today.

It was a bit annoying that the descent through Fritchley was so steep that I had to brake, and then on the other side of the valley I went up another 100 meters to Belper. Luckily it was mostly flat after that along the valley until I reached the old town of Derby. It felt a bit strange that the old town was almost deserted at 17:45. But as soon as I reached the ring road the traffic was like any British (or German) city. The hotel was good with a noticeable difference in appearance between the front and back.

After the shower I took a little walk to find dinner. And spent a lot of time checking train connections as it was clear I wouldn’t be able to complete the remaining distance in one day. The difficult thing was again booking the bike (not possible online, but necessary) and I had three different options to shorten my bike tour on the last day. I ended up not booking anything but hoping to do so at Leicester train station.