Manchester to Birmingham

Forget using a smartphone to track rides when doing proper milage (although I would have thought the battery would last longer than ~40-50 miles, how long does it take you?)!

Garmin Edge 200 if you don't mind not having HR or Cadence data, Edge 500 if you do!

There are now those Bryton things which are also pretty good and a bit cheaper than a Garmin.

I tried using strava to document a ride and my battery juiced out just after Crewe. No bueno.

I like the location services on the phone as I like to explore new routes and frequently get lost so the ability to pinpoint my position against a map on a smartphone is ideal for me. Well, it was until I updated to IOS 6.
Apple maps-->garbage.

I've recently started playing with http://www.openstreetmap.org/ as the cycle routes seem better, all the sustrans routes round here are certainly on it. For longer distance routes the CTC site has some good suggestions and routes you can stitch together.

Me and a mate rode to Stoke for the Tour of Britain stage there the other week. We went up through Stockport to Marple, across the Middlewood way to Macclesfield, took the road up to Congleton then used the Biddulph Valley way to Stoke. Took us just 3 hours and we hardly killed ourselves to get there.

Im from marple! woo.

Has anyone done this yet? I'm thinking of giving it a try on the 16th of Feb. Any suggested routes?

Macclesfield > Rudyard Lake > Cannock Chase and you're there.

Did we not disuss the fact that you'd end up in Birmingham?

Did we not disuss the fact that you'd end up in Birmingham?

Rep'd

I have to go to my friends bday there next week, i'm hoping that the ride and possibly a curry will take the edge off.

Brum's reputation for producing great indian food, needs to be reviewed.
Lots of poor quality restaurants, selling you the same dishes, but with different meat, who cash in on a reputation that shouldnt exist..
Bypass Brum and ride to leicester.
Birmingham is shit.

My sister is living in leicester atm, would you reccomend it? I assumed as my sister was there it would be DULL

I'm from Leicester. It's aight. Not a dull dead-end small town but not quite a full-scale busy happening big city either, but I like it enough. Good pubs.