Mike and John's Sheffield Cycling Weekend - Day 2

After taking me over some pretty huge hills on Friday (four of which were over 400 meters high!) John promised me an easier day's cycling on Saturday...

The first 20 minutes saw us going uphill(!) as we climbed out of Sheffield and headed south towards Chesterfield, skirting around the A61. After briefly admiring the crooked spire from the dual carriageway we headed east towards Mansfield where we stopped for a well earned snack.

From Mansfield we headed in a north-easterly direction through some small towns/villages towards Retford. This part of the journey was pretty flat but harder work than I had imagined. The flat roads mean there is no chance to "coast" so we were constantly cycling in order to keep up our momentum.

We stopped at Retford for some lunch (there's only so far Weetabix, Soreen and dried apricots will take you) and then headed North on the A638 towards the interestingly named Scrooby. After heading south towards Blyth and almost ending up on the A1 we headed back towards Sheffield. I suffered a puncture in Dinnington and was overjoyed when we stumbled across a bike shop in Wales (not the country) where I assumed I could get some much needed air in my tyre (there's only so much you can squeeze in with a handpump). Unfortunatley the shop turned out to be a room full of rusty old bikes and an oily man with no high-pressured pump.

Something I discovered from my weekend of cycling around Sheffiled is that the city seems to sit in a massive crater! This means you have to go uphill to get out of the city and also uphill to get back in to it. After 75 odd miles of cycling we were presented with another 25 minutes of hard climb before being able to relax on the descent in to the city.

The 82 mile cycle, which can be viewed on the Sportstracker website, took us 7 hours in total. The two days of cycling reaffirmed how difficult our challenge will be but I'm still confident that both me and John are capable of making it. Especially with some generous sponsorship.