Chester to Southport

Friday September 24, 2010
Today was a rather uneventful day, so this post should be fairly short. Many of my posts have been quite detailed so far eh?

My campsite by the River Dee in Chester, with the homeless blokes tent in the left.

I had milk with me so I had my cereal before packing up, it feels better doing it this way. It's always the first thing I do after waking up, eat a big breakfast, and I just don't function without it. The homeless bloke was already up, and drinking a beer for breakfast (now this would simply not suffice for me). He was annoyed that he'd spilt his beer in his tent during the night, so his sleeping bag was wet and smelled of beer. I thought to myself "well if you didn't drink beer while in bed, there would be no risk of that happening!"
Before heading out of Chester, I needed to withdraw some cash, and I went to a free Wi-Fi hotspot and had a chat to Silkom, Rachel and Dad on Skype, which was good.
From Chester I rode through the towns of Frodsham, Runcorn, Widnes, and lots of other little places along the way.

Birds hanging out on the power lines.

The bridge between Runcorn and Widnes, England.

Some of the roads were in extremely poor condition. One of them I don't think I've ever seen another road with more water-filled pot-holes in it.

Some rough tracks through Chester and Runcorn.

Some rough tracks through Chester and Runcorn.

It was like this for several kilometres!
Later to go past Liverpool I took the quiet route along the old Cheshire Line railway, which used to take people from the Liverpool area to the beaches at Southport, until it went out of business in the 1950's with the increased use of the motorcar.

On route 62 of the Sustrans National Cycle Network along the old Cheshire Line railway, also part of the  Trans Pennine Trail.

Riding along route 62 of the Sutrans National Cycle Network towards Southport.

By taking this route I avoided all the busy roads between Runcorn and Preston, this is the industrial area of England, with Liverpool on the West and Manchester to the East, it's all a very densely populated area.
It was a peculiar day because I actually wasn't feeling hungry.
 At about 4:30 pm I stopped for lunch and forced some tuna and tomato rolls down, knowing that I must need the energy, but I actually wasn't hungry. I'm so sick of tomato and tuna rolls!

The spot I stopped for lunch, Liverpool is just off to the West (right of this picture).

Riding along route 62 of the Sutrans National Cycle Network towards Southport. 

Attempted to take a short-cut over sand-dunes but changed my mind!

The sun setting behind with the moon in the sky, near Southport.

I had wanted to get to Preston that day, but it was dark by the time I got to Southport, so I found a spot to camp there, in amongst some trees behind a caravan park. Heh, it's good to have simple English town names that I can spell, rather than those crazy Welsh names!
I thought the hub dynamo would charge the iPhone quicker than it does. It was at 25% when I left Chester, and after 5 hours of riding it still wasn't fully charged when I got to Southport. I guess it's power consumption would have been high though, since I was using the Bike Hub app for most of the day, with the screen on most of the time while it was sitting in the dock.

Ride stats
Distance: 97.75 km
Average: 17.4 km/h
Maximum: 37.9 km/h
Time: 5:35:12