County Bagging

Over on road.cc, regular contributor Jo has come up with what looks like a fun challenge for 2013 – the road.cc Tourist Trophy.

The concept is simple; each calendar month of the year you ride in a different county of the UK. You’re not allowed to count your home county but you are allowed to count one overseas country as a wildcard. You can only include counties visited on a “proper” ride, so sticking your folder in the car every time you go on a trip somewhere and having a quick turn around a car park doesn’t count.

With family in Wales and Scotland I should have a wee bit of an advantage, and I’ve already counted West Lothian for January. On the other hand Lancashire is a big old county, and I live in “Central Lancs”, so the counties I can hit on a ride straight out of the back gate will not take me too far into the year!

I’ll keep this up to date as the year, and the challenge, progress.

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Home county: Lancashire

January: West Lothian (icy turn out of Edinburgh and into the countryside on a special guest appearance with Lothian and Borders CTC proved far more enticing than a day with the Mother-in-law!)
February: Merseyside (Delivering Bikeability training in sunny but chilly Rainford)
March: Cheshire (another work-related trip. More bikeability training, this time in Warrington. Nasty crosswind on the ride home but fortunately avoided the blizzards that came that night)
April: Denbighshire (chucked the bike in the car when heading to Northwich for Race Marshalling. Took a little diversion over the border on the way home and rode the Horseshoe Pass both ways)

May: Durham. Opportunity presented by the better half arranging a client meeting near Bishop Auckland for the Monday after we were at a wedding in Edinburgh on the weekend. Some fabulous roads – the road builders up there seem not to care for terrain, they just lay the road wherever they want it to go irespective of gradient. Climbed nearly 500m in just over 30km. Not a bad wee jaunt despite the crazy wind and recovering from a cold.

June: Staffordshire. More marshalling at Weaverham. Went east this time once my duties were over. Parked up in Biddulph and went to check out the (in)famous Mow Cop. Steep!

Mow Cop. On the Staffs/Cheshire border

July: Shropshire. Another multi-tasking type trip. My wife had a meeting in Telford and we decided to continue on to visit family in Mid-Wales from there. I found a really enjoyable route using cycle paths down to the Ironbridge Gorge and then into the lanes around the Wrekin. Cracking little loop in beautiful weather.

Ironbridge, Iron Bike

August:
September:
October:
November:
December: