The Heritage Ride 5

Once at Aintree the route skirts the race-course, leaves the line and runs along the Leeds & Liverpool canal for a short while. When I was at Liverpool finding a quiet bit of the canal to revise by in the hot summer sun was something I did each year; there is something about the stillness of a canal on a hot day that I love, especially on the fertile Lancashire plain.

My first bike tour was along this canal. Borrowing girlfriends father's bike [very old, 3 gears, very heavy] and totally unprepared [no tool kit, no tent, not much money, not a clue] I set off one day from Liverpool following the canal tow-path on its 90 odd miles to Leeds. Back in the day the tow-path was far less welcoming to cyclists than it is now. There was little in the way of a surfaced path, and around Blackburn and Burnley I was having to hoik the heavy bike over barbed gates and barriers. By the time I got to Parbold, I had broken the chain, found a garage, got it fixed and carried on to sleep in a field above Blackburn. Feeling good I cycled over the summit tunnel near Barnoldswick and then got a puncture at Skipton. No spares, no knowledge. My course of action? Ring girlfriend's mother for a lift to Ilkley. Pathetic but true. Nevertheless I was bitten by the cycle touring bug and I have never been cured.

The cycle track across the Lancashire Plain