We woke up this morning after a really good sleep – I had fallen asleep by 8:45pm last night! We got ready and set off early for the longest cycle day of the trip ahead (135km).
We cycled 45km to Middlewich where we met our wonderful friends James and Rachel who were joining us for part of today’s ride. It was SO nice to see them!
We cycled the next 30km altogether to a lovely village called Lynn where we stopped for lunch.
We got lunch from a recommended bakery (recommended by James’ parents) – they did amazing toasted sandwiches which we had as well as loads of sweets treats!
After lunch Rachel cycled back to James’ parents in Warrington while James, Harry and I finished the last 60km of the ride to Preston (with a mini break at a local pub for orange juices and lemonades).
James’ dad had very kindly agreed to pick the three of us up from an agreed location in Preston to take us back to their house in Warrington. Unfortunately their had been a bit of miscommunication about the pick up location and we ended up in different places! But James gave his dad a call and he soon came to our rescue. The drive was about an hour back to their house and he had kindly brought lots of snacks for the car with him.
We got back to their house, with quite rosey noses and cheeks and terrible tan lines, at about 7:30pm and said hi to Rachel again and James’ mum – their house was lovely! They told Harry and I to go and have a bath and wind down while they finished cooking the dinner and James washed our bikes to make sure they carried on working well for us for the second half of the trip!
It was then time for dinner, which we’d been looking forward to for the first half of the trip as we’d heard we were being fed home made lasagna with garlic bread followed by Sharon’s famously good sticky toffee pudding and oodles of sticky toffee sauce. Well, they both loved up to expectations and beyond – it was all delicious and the portions definitely filled us back up after our long cycle today!
They had all been so kind to us but we’re very understanding when we were ready to go to bed soon after dinner, so we got ready for bed and hit the sack before another long day of cycling tomorrow.
HALF WAY!
Summary:
Distance cycled: 135km
Elevation climbed: 712m (nice and flat compared to what we had been used to!)
Time pedaling: 6h 47mins
Highlight of the day: Seeing James and Rachel and spending the day with them (greatly boosting morale) and then seeing the Boot parents and how kind they all were to us! A huge shout out goes to them all – we owe them big time!
Lowlight of the day: Beth struggling with hives on her legs from the wind
County count: 11 (Cheshire and Lancashire added to the list)
Towlers' Travels 
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