the christmas market ride

the christmas market ride, a photo by rOcKeTdOgUk on Flickr.

the day dawned cold and clear with a wide spread hard frost, everything outside was white over but the Sun soon started making the garden fence steam and i knew it was going to be glorious. The Frankfurt Christmas market is now an annual fixture in Birmingham city centre so our objective today was to pay it a visit by bicycle. Luckily I've worked out an almost traffic free route using the Worcs-B'ham canal with a brief trip through a housing estate to get over the top of the Wast hill tunnel. Because of the heavy rain yesterday the canal towpath was unfortunately full of puddles almost it's entire length which quickly got our feet wet and made them cold, there are a couple of places where the towpath changes sides of the canal and you have to ride up and over a bridge to cross, on one of these which was quite steep i gave it a run up, got out of the saddle and suddenly the chain jammed, the cranks locked and i almost went over the bars, i'm not sure how i controlled it but somehow i did and managed to recover and stop before doing any damage to me or the bike. the rest of the ride in was uneventful, even the super narrow tunnel didn't pose too much trouble and i only caught the super wide bars once on the wall!!
The city centre was very busy but we still managed to ride a few sets of steps (in the less busy areas) before heading to the bar and introducing Ben to his first German wheat beer. Suitably refreshed ;-) we needed to sober up a bit before attempting some of the narrow bits next to the canal on the way home, so after following @yorksbakerycafe on twitter and seeing some of the cakes and pastries they had on offer we tried to find it, it's situated at the Colmore Row end of Newhall street, easy to find we parked the bikes outside and i popped in, immediately greeted by friendly smiling staff i asked if they had anywhere safe to put the bikes and they said bring them in and pop them up the corner it'll be fine, so we did. i have to say the cappuccino i had was honestly the best i've ever tasted a million times better than the (now i can tell in comparison) junk you get in the likes of starbucks etc. i also had a slice of treacle tart which was delicious, quite lemony too which made it even better. the only downer was the fact that i could only eat one cake, the choice was too much! I also need to add that the Barista's moustache was awesome, i hope it's permanent and not just for Mo-vember. a highly recommended venue for the hungry cyclist. suitably less inebriated we started back before darkness descended and made things tricky, as the sun went down it felt a lot colder and it was good to get back home after a fab day out on bikes, nothing technical, but who needs technical all the time?, sometimes just being out on the bike with mates enjoying the urban environment is enough
ride 167
27 miles
total 3110
commute 843