"Training" ride to Worksop

Описание: Warm sunshine and following winds are every cyclist dream. And both are attainable, even in January, if you pay attention to the weather forecasts and let the train take the pain.

Winter rides are always going to be shorter because of the day length and so my local area shrinks and I get bored with riding the same circuits. Using the train to do half of my ride (either out or back) means that I can go further and expand my horizons. It also means that I can choose which direction to ride and so contrive to have a following wind all the day long.

Saturday January the 24th 2025 had a forecast for sunshine but a strong south east wind. The wind has been southeast for a while now and so I have recently explored all of the routes to the South and East of Boston where I live. I want a change of scenery! It's time for a "training" ride: one where the train does half of the work - the half with the head wind!

Worksop doesn't sound like much of a holiday destination, but the route thither passes through pleasant, easy scenery including Clumber Park, and the whole route is on the National Cycle Network (Routes 1, 64, 647 and 6). I went online and booked a cheap advance train ticket home for 6:39 p.m. which would give me a whole day to do the cycling and probably time for a meal before catching the train. What could go wrong?

On the ride nothing went wrong (except for one minor navigational error). I hope that the video will show what a thoroughly pleasant day I had. I especially enjoyed riding through the woods. At Worksop I found a nice chippy and had a lovely meal while talking to friendly locals.

I got to the station in plenty of time for my train. The information board told me that it was expected on time, and then that it was delayed. It remained "delayed" until after the next train arrived (also delayed) well over one hour later, at which point it changed to "cancelled". Unfortunately for me that meant that I would miss my connection at Nottingham which should have been the last train of the evening to Boston. If they had cancelled it 30 minutes sooner I could have still got home by a different route!

At Nottingham, EMR customer services told me to catch the next train to Grantham and that a SMS message would be sent to me with details of a taxi which would pick me up from Grantham. Surprisingly, no SMS message came!

At Grantham, a very helpful LNER lady phoned EMR on my behalf and told them what I thought about them! She also made me a cup of tea which was very welcome by then. Her call proved effective and I soon received an SMS about a taxi which would arrive in half an hour (I phoned the driver to confirm this). She even offered to keep station open until my taxi arrived.

The taxi was excellent and the driver was himself a bit of a cyclist so we passed a pleasant hour on the journey from Grantham to Boston. I arrived home at 00.15 on Sunday morning!

The journey from Boston to Worksop on my bicycle had taken 6 hours and 14 minutes; the return journey by train was about 30 minutes shorter in duration (and much less fun). So it wasn't quicker by bicycle – but there really wasn't much in it!

I intended this to be just a short video but I'm afraid it ended up rather long. I really enjoyed the day cycling and I hope that you have enjoyed the video. If you have watched some of my other videos you may notice that the slide changes are slightly slower in this video. That has made it a bit longer (by nearly 50%) – I wonder what you think of that?