the NW Alpers hit the big city ride

forbidden steps, a photo by rOcKeTdOgUk on Flickr.

i awoke to a frosty start to the day but the sun came out to make this a fab ride. Ben and i were riding into Birmingham for no other reason than he hadn't done it before. so we used the B'ham-Worcs canal to avoid most of the traffice (apart from a short section past the Observatory, BCFC training ground and Kings Norton) once on the towpath it was remarkable how well trained the foot users were, i had my bell and a little "ting" on it and the pedestrians moved to one side, we thanked them and got quite a few "you're welcome" replies in return, a marked difference to the canal on our own patch, people here are just more used to a busy canal and cyclists i guess. it didn't take long for us to get to the city and it was pretty uneventful apart from Ben nearly going in the canal when he misjudged a narrowing of the towpath, hitting the centre of town we resisted the lure of ostrich burgers ("ostrich burger shortage-please panice buy") and went to Greggs!, fueled with pastry and cake we played on the steps, visited Evans bike store , watched the pretty girls in their early summer clothes and then headed back. back on home turf we made it to the pub ("beer shortage-please panic buy") had a pint of real ale put he world to rights chatting as you do, including when visiting the Gents room where an old guy proclaimed "a lot of big knobs hang out in here" and then headed through the woods to home. no extreme hills, but a lot of pedaling on the flat made it a nice workout and cool to act like delinquents when playing on bikes on the city streets.
ride 48
33 miles
total 886
commute 261.5