Five Moultoneers met up on a fairly non-descript road of semi-detached houses in a suburb of Chester with the threat of heavy showers literally hanging over us. At about 10:50 a shower started, punctuated with hailstones, some of us sought shelter in the doorway of a “house to let” but as all 5 couldn’t get shelter and 11 o’clock had now come and gone, we set off into the rain.
After about 30 meters of road we dropped onto national route 5, a beautifully smooth track based on the old rail line from Chester to Shotton steel works. After about 5 minutes the rain stopped and that was the last time it inconvenienced us for the rest of the day. Making good progress along the track, into a slight head wind, we travelled down this straight track passing numerous cyclists, dog walkers and ramblers. The tarmac was truly smooth, not damaged by tree roots or dug up & patched by utility companies etc, a real pleasure to ride along. We crossed the pedestrian bridge over the main A55 coast road by the ever-shrinking RAF Sealand facility. We continued on the national route 5 riding over the river Dee bridge, along the platforms of Shotton railway station and down onto the Chester Road for a café stop at the Corner Kitchen, with a great bike stand outside!
Suitably rested, fed & watered we set off taking a slightly different route back to the Dee bridge, crossed it once again and rode along the river side path with the strengthening wind now behind us. We passed the beautiful John Summers building, the old reception & management offices for the Shotton steel works – now sadly a boarded up listed building; I have visited the reception in the past when it was a fabulously appointed building, well worth preserving and using again in some form. The miles sped by on this smooth tarmced pathway as we passed the shooting school on the left then BA and its A380 Airbus wing facility on the right.
Shortly after we passed the water treatment works we turned off the riverside path and up Tower Road, turning right at Telford’s Warehouse to join the Shropshire Union Canal and up a flight of locks (the biggest climb of the day!). Once on the top of the locks we followed the canal through a deep & damp sandstone cutting topped with houses, along a cobbled section (love the suspension on Moulton’s) and out into a nicely re-developed area of Chester. We passed numerous renovated warehouses with bars & cafes, moored up canal houseboats, pedestrians – a really well manicured cosmopolitan area. After we passed the old shot tower, used for the manufacture of lead shot for shooting and an area about to be re-developed, we turned off the canal and re-joined the road network again. Taking a back road route passed the site of the old Chester hospital we returned to our cars in a few minutes.
All in all a pleasant day out, good company, 17 miles of mostly flat terrain, nearly all the route was free from internal combustion engines – just a pity about the rain at the start.
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