51 miles into a near head-wind up one ghost road all day with rain threatening but never quite making it. A ghost road (made up by The League Of Ordinary Gentlemen) is a road left empty by the creation of an adjacent motorway. The M74 was full of traffic, the older version, now renumbered b7076, was empty, it is in fine condition, though those granite chippings slow a Penny from the usual 13MPH to about 8, and the wind did the rest. Spare a thought for the two riders with hangovers too, that bought them down to walking pace!
This Ghost Road also had stretches of an even older A74 beside it, now a cycle path. Highly recommend to any cyclist, we wondered past boarded up fuel stations and remnants of bygone times of travel, the great irony was that this was all, once, a Roman road.
Lockerbie was the only town, like Aberfan and Hungerford; synonymous with events it cannot dismiss or forget.
A mass picnic broke out en-route, the location was Narnia, Paul’s shopping exquisite.(fig 1)
Tom’s hammock saddle broke a string so a handy bungee got him home to Abingdon, to a welcome Days Inn on the motorway and an early night for us all. ..
Cally’s map Reading was so atrocious we ended up in Southern France (fig 2)
