Leicestershire Cannonball – 25 Aug

Leicestershire and Rutland Adventure Cannonball Caper

The route starts at 10:30 from the Dairy Barn Café a short distance from Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire about half a mile off the A606

The Dairy Barn, Whissendine Rd, Leesthorpe, Melton Mowbray LE14 2XJ

Grid Reference: SK 792 152

Coordinates: 52° 43′ 44″ N: 0° 49′ 41″ W

The route takes you up the narrow Cuckoo Hill and then some mild unsurfaced roads (they must be mild as a Tesco delivery van was met coming the other way on an early recce).

Then through the town of Melton Mowbray for fuel, supplies and a pork pie if you fancy it. Heading West and then North via the village of Wymondham (Café at the windmill) into the more rural part of Leicestershire and some more challenging tracks before looping South towards Rutland,  which is once again the smallest county in Britain after a few years of being part of Leicestershire.

The route then heads south and east and covers parts of the route of Britain’s largest one day cycle race, the Rutland – Melton CiCle Classic renowned for its use of rough and unsurfaced roads, many of which are used by this Adventure Cannonball. No surprise there as the planner for this route, Tony Ferrari is also Assistant Race Director for the CiCle Classic.

Passing through picturesque villages like Owston, Knossington and Somerby. It also uses Bruces Lane, known to the cycling fraternity as “Somerburg”. This lane once had a fearsome reputation and as a result motorbike marshals on the race are diverted round it but to be honest  since a deluge during the 2012 event washed away the mud from the track, parts of the tarmac surface, originally laid in the 1940’s have reappeared make it much easier to negotiate.