March 11th was my birthday and Caroline booked a romantic long weeked break in Shropshire for the 2 of us in a fancy country house near Church Stoke. We drove there on Sunday and on Monday we planned to go out for a birthday ride in the beautiful countryside around there. I got my OS map of the area out as I don't know the area and noticed that there were lots of brown curvy lines on the map and lots of lanes with arrows and even double arrows on them! 😮

I planned a route of about 39 miles to Craven Arms near Ludlow and there was a very direct lanes route with a few arrows on it and the indirect contingency route that went down a B road down in the valleys and had no arrows on it. On the morning of 11th we awoke to changeable skies, strong wind and occasional snow flurries, so perfect conditions for a gentle romantic ride. 2 miles into the ride and directly into the biting headwind my cheeks were starting to go numb (all 4 of them). The easy B road was also not so easy and was definitely "what I call undulating". We grappled our way to Bishops castle and just after this lovely village I gave Caroline the choice of straight but a bit hilly or further but flatter and more sheltered. I nearly fell off my bike when she chose the shorter route which you could see disappering straight up the side of the hill ahead. About 15 minutes of grunting later I got to the top of this dead straight relentless 2 mile hill of about 1 in 7 and waited for Caroline who had ridden half of it and then decided to warm up her feet by walking the second half.

We dropped down to the valley bottom again and I gave her the same choice for the second section. Fortunately she chose the longer steadier route so we only had headwinds and extra miles to contend with. We got all excited when we saw a sign for a cafe that advertised their love of cyclists and it was about 4 miles short of Craven Arms. Unfortunately when we got there it was closed so we battled on to Craven Arms where we stopped for a well earned hot drink and some food. The ride back was super fast with the tail wind and all was going well until we rode into the snow storm! 😡 We had seen clouds dumping snow all around all the way out but until then we had all but missed them apart from a few snow flakes. With 6 miles to go we got properly snowed on and then we rode around the corner into blue skies and dry roads, but by then we were covered in snow.

So all in all it was a challenging but great day out on the bike and I would highly reccommend the area between Church Stretton, Ludlow and Welshpool for it's superb scenery, quiet roads and cracking hills. If you're really keen you could ride there from Northwich and back in one day at around 150 miles round trip. I'm sure Jimmy and Derek would love to do that as a warm up for the 400k audaxes to come later this Summer.

Thank you Caroline .. I won't forget my 49th Birthday treat in a hurry. 😉

Cheers

Dave