I’m thinking cycling down to see the family at the weekend, wife is going in the car so it’s a good excuse for me to catch up on some mileage.

My main concern is that I’ve never really done this sort of thing before, i’m alright with the climbing and the mileage but I’ve never planned a route through the unknown.

As a starting point I used the Strava route planner that says it uses the heatmaps (that I like using for planning MTB routes) – this was the outcome… https://www.strava.com/routes/8149780

How does that look as a route? From some googling it seems like the A515 is a recipe for certain death. Is it that bad through the Peak? I’m happy enough on snake pass.

Any suggestions are more than welcome, I’ve never even driven on most of those roads.

Personally wouldn’t go anywhere near the A515 as its bad enough driving it. Day trippers and quarry trucks don’t make a great combination.
Would look at going cross country from Longnor as there is some beautiful riding through there and you can wind your way down to Ashbourne.

I would be more concerned with the fact you are ending up in Irchester ……

I would avoid a roads, the A5 should also be avoided as it’s full of drivers who want to rack up miles like as motorway.

I have relatives in crick (I live in N Manchester) and have idly pondered it, my plan would be to go to alderley and then on through the flat lands round the back of stoke and all the wiggly lanes in a general straight line and stop in a village cafe or petrol station on the way down

Irchester country park has some cracking fun riding 🙂

Its the inhabitants of Irchester that are more the problem ……

Well, i did it. Cracking day for it but looking at the strava i went off waaaaay to hard. Started feeling the twinges of cramp about 55 miles.

That bit where i said i was alright with the mileage and climbing, yeah i was pretty wrong about that. Around the 80 mile mark this lad called Alex let me sit on his wheel for about an hour, showed me a route round the 3 hills i was heading straight for and basically saved my ass.

Going 7mph, I’m first gear up a hill you’d expect to be doing nearly 20 up if you were fresh played some real games with my head.

I’m currently about 4 miles away 🙂