Birmingham to Bristol - Training for fun

Ok it's been a fair few months since I have done a + 50 mile ride and I wanted to see how it would feel.  I am a fair bit heavier again (don't ask) I have a lot of weight to remove but I still wanted to see how my legs would hold up, more importantly my knee and my achiles.

So friday night I knew I didn't have a lot planned for Saturday so I did a quick scan on the map and selected Bristol as my destination, a quick scan showed me that it was roughly 100 miles away which would be a good days trip and a nice test of my legs etc..

I booked a ticket from Bristol back to Birmingham for 6:00 pm, i figured this would give me plenty of time to arrive

I set out at around 7:30 and deliberately kept at a comfortable pace, it was going to be a long day. I have put some pics below.  I felt good, no knee pain or achilees pain although no major hills, just a few hills as normal and some long gentle climbs as well as some nice downhills, the main route was along the a417 and a38 straight into Bristol.

The only difficulty I had was the final run into Bristol which became a little convuluted but I did pick up on something called the Bristol Railway/Cycle route something I will look into later, theres a link here at some point I will meander along that one :-)

http://www.bristolbathrailwaypath.org.uk/home.shtml

Heres some pictures of my trip: