The Preston Guild Wheel

Chris and I have been trying to arrange a day to cycle the Preston Guild Wheel, a 21 mile cycle path around Preston, it’s taken us a few months but today was finally the day and it turned out just perfect.  We arranged to leave at 10am, which gave me time for my usual Caffe Nero pit stop.  I then cycled round to his house, just a few minutes away.  Chris has a lot of gear that I don’t from fancy garden equipment, to tools and in this case a people carrier, with a tow bar mounted cycle rack.  Unfortunately my bike didn’t fit on his rack but not to worry as he quickly reconfigured the seats to create enough space for my bike inside, his bike squeezed onto the rack with a little effort.

We parked on the outskirts of Preston, on a side road close to the canal and joined the cycle track immediately.  It was a fantastic ride, mostly on dedicated cycle tracks, along the canal tow path, on quiet roads and river bank.  There was always something to see and time to see it, because it’s not a fast ride, it has lots of twists and turns, hills and gates that slowed us down.  To be honest though slowing down was just perfect, because it meant that faster cyclists weren’t rushing past us and we had plenty of opportunity to chat.

We timed the ride perfectly for a lunch-time stop off at Brockholes, which Chris had never been to and like everyone I take there he came away impressed.  We must have spent an hour there sitting inside, at a window seat overlooking the lake and the Herons fishing.  We ability to execute cake of course!

The second part of the ride from Brockholes was the best, being mostly a smooth, easy ride along the river.  My favourite part was through Avenham park.  I’m planning to walk this part of the route in reverse soon as parking up by the river in Preston and walking to Brockholes should make for a fantastic day out.

Weather wide it couldn’t have been better, it was sunny but with just enough wind to keep me cool and we arrived home just a few minutes before the rain started.

Overall it was a truly splendid day, a totally new experience for me (Chris had been a few times before) and great company. 

Back home I finished packing for our Holiday tomorrow and we had another excellent big family dinner.

I even had time to do something productive, I figured out how to upload my favourite 250 songs to Amazon Music, (which is free), I can now stream these songs and any of the million+ that were already in their free-to-stream collection to all of my devices, I will be cancelling iTunes Match!  This is a really great benefit of Amazon prime, not just because of the music, but because of the well designed, simple and reliable apps that Amazon has for all platforms, including Windows, there’s really no comparison to the bloated monster that Apple’s iTunes has become and of course I get to avoid the adverts that ruin Spotify’s free offering.  One more hook that Amazon has in me, but for now at least I don’t care, Amazon rules!