Day 22: Anyone for signposts? Nope? Didn't think so!

Loughborough, Leicestershire to Sheffield, South Yorkshire
65.21 miles (1171.49 miles cumulatively)

Now, I don't know if anyone has ever tried this but honestly, for a bit of fun you can't beat it.

Get yourself a normal, run-of-the-mill road atlas. Nothing fancy like AA, just a service station 'special offer of £2.99 when you buy three galaxy bars' one is fine.

Next, get on a bike and guide yourself into the middle of nowhere on the roads that a marked, but not coloured in any way and so you know that they are really really tiny.

Then, and this is where it starts to get fun...follow these roads so that you are approaching major junctions, you know, with roads like the A50 and M1 and things like that.

Start following the road that you think exists (and does for the first 300 metres) and then (here's the fun point) laugh as the road disappears from view with a dead end and pile of rubble. Brilliant.

This happened to me 3 times today! Yes, 3 times. I know, hilarious. You don't want to mess about with these roads, they vanish, and when they do, you are stranded in the middle of a spaghetti junction effect. Again though, please don't panic, I didn't start cycling up the M1, but I did chunter rather loudly as I had to retrace my steps in order to find a road that did actually exist and did not have cars travelling at a million miles an hour!

Essentially, here lie two of the main issues of Cycle England - When do the roads actually exist that you are meant to be signposted? And when they do exist, when are they actually signposted? Let's think about Chesterfield shall we? I followed a great cycle path into the centre of the town and thought all was hunky dory, only for, at that point, all remnants of signposting to disappear. And I don't just mean cycle signposts, I mean any signpost. Totally dumbfounded was I! It came down to the fact that I just had to trust my instinct, pick a direction and cycle until I could hit a sign (not literally) that would tell me generally if I was heading in the right direction or not. When it turned out that I was right (yes, it's true, I was a scout) it felt like I had won the lottery! Only with a lot less money and far more achy legs.

Here's a tip for any cyclist that wants to do any distance cycling (or any cycling for that matter):

Don't trust maps - They Lie.
Don't trust signposts - They Lie, and then disappear.
Pick a destination. Pick a general direction as the crow flies to hit this destination and go. I guarantee you'll get there...eventually.