The thing that defines British weather is its high unpredictability — and that’s exactly the thing that made me extremely nervous about planning an outdoor skating trip while going on a trip, especially considering that it’s winter.
This skate is precisely the reason I planned a 4 day trip in Bath. In contrast, many Londoners would consider Bath a day-return tourist hotspot; which is possible if you only plan to hastily browse through the collections in the Roman Baths. Not to mention that there are many other museums and beautiful vantage points of the town, which makes it a perfect destination for solo travellers.
Nonetheless, here I am, at the start of the Bristol and Bath Railway Path. Without further ado, with a brief collection of the photos I have taken along the skate, let’s embark on this supposedly-2-hour-but-more-like-5-hour journey!
For most of the journey, the cycling path is nothing more than a 3-metre concrete path with occasional signage along the way. Pretty underwhelming for something that is supposedly acclaimed as a “national cycle network”.
That said, the path is apparently maintained by a group of volunteers. I’m just glad that this kind of thing even exists, as I only saw a couple people using the path during the entirety of my journey.
Another odd thing is that the initial stretch of the journey relies on non-segregated roads, which reminds me of the overrated “cycle superhighways” and “quiet-ways” in London.
Anyhow, everything from this point on is traffic free.
The majority of the path is flat, which is not surprising considering that it runs along an abandoned railway.
This makes it perfect for cycling, and I imagine that as a cyclist it would take you under 2 hours to complete the entire path.
Travelling on skates is however a completely different story. Under very dry weather conditions, this path might barely be considered passable for someone who is acclimated to urban street skating.
There was no rain on my particular day, but there must had been a brief drizzle the previous night, which made the leaf-covered path extremely slippery. It is analogous to the idea that overground trains have to run extremely slowly during the autumn months due to wet leaves lying on tracks.
On the day, I was travelling on my Seba 4×80 FR skates. Not that I have anything else to compare it against, as this is the only pair of skates that I have (in addition to a pair of aggressive’s). A set of 3×110’s with larger wheels might have made the journey more bearable, but I imagine it still wouldn’t fare well in these conditions.
And just when I was feeling extremely inclined to give up (which happened numerous times during the journey, and was not really worth it anyway as the train in these peripheral towns came every 2 hours) I was greeted by this tremendously gorgeous sunset!
Though in hindsight this also probably signalled that I was dangerously behind schedule.
The Avon Valley Railway is one of the reasons I decided to skate along this path. Sadly it was closed during the winter months, which made the entire place rather desolate looking.
Hello Kitty!
The following section of the cycling path then runs directly adjacent to the heritage railway. It would have been nice to actually try and race against the train (if there were a service running), which isn’t a far stretch considering that the heritage railway is a tourist service running on old steam loco’s.
At the time I must have found these signal boxes a rather amusing feature.
That said, now that I’m working in Oakham (and living in Leicester), I have come to notice these boxes all over the place, controlling the level-crossings along the Syston and Peterborough Railway. It’s interesting how these archaic looking boxes have effectively been retrofitted with modern signalling systems (ECTS I guess).
This rather unremarkable photo of the A414 motorway marks the point where I successfully managed to confuse myself and add a 1-hour detour to my original intended route. I recall my-clueless-self seeing a very exciting looking (translation: very steep) slope and strolling down for 10 minutes before realising that I have actually went on a detour.
This was when the sky started to darken, and from that point on all my photos started looking shaky. Luckily the path was lit, at least to some extent.
The tunnel at Staple Hill was one of the most exciting, but most slippery bits of the journey. Along with the occasional drip from the ceiling, I imagine this would have felt very eerie without my tunes.
Surprisingly, I managed to run into a jogger who kindly took a photo for me!
And this marks a third of my journey remaining. Sadly I did not take much photos along this stretch as I was hastily trying to skate faster (and fall). That said, the scenery along the remaining stretch was pretty unremarkable anyway. At least that was what I felt when the sky rapidly darkened and started drizzling.
And after another hour of skating, this photo marks the end of my journey. And it wasn’t even 6 o clock yet!