A day ride into the middle of Birmingham – choose the right route and it can work
Dorset to Birmingham and back isn’t a day ride I’d normally do just for the experience, but this time I had an excuse. My musical nephew was playing a solo percussion concert at Birmingham Conservatoire, right in the city centre – not only that, but I was short of day ride features for MSL. What else could I do?
Ask a sat-nav, and it would probably have sent me straight up the M5, but I wanted to follow my own route across country, though I did take the TomTom, which would come in handy to find an address in the middle of the big city.
It wasn’t a great ride up. The A350 over the western edge of Salisbury Plain is always lovely, but we hit reality and heavy traffic on the Warminster bypass – slow and tedious with lots of roundabouts and HGVs all the way to Chippenham. The A429 is usually quieter north of the M4, but I was stuck behind a lorry for miles. You know how it is when the overtaking opportunities are never quite enough – either the visibility’s not there or oncoming traffic is. North of Cirencester, the Fosse Way is usually fun, but all the traffic was out today, sticking us in 45-55mph convoys.
This story is from the October 2018 edition of Motorcycle Sport & Leisure.
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This story is from the October 2018 edition of Motorcycle Sport & Leisure.
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