Apologies for the tardy posting, but this ride took all of Saturday, the I went out again with the club on Sunday, and had people around for dinner in the evening, which meant the afternoon was taken up with preparations. Anyway...
On Friday, the forecast for Saturday suggested a gorgeous cycling day, and my wife was away for the day. I quickly hatched a plan for a 100-miler. I picked on Ely as a destination, simply because it was years since I'd been there, and it was roughly the right distance away. I worked out a route using the brilliant
cycle.travel mapping (more on this later), printed off the directions, glued them together into a 4 foot long strip, and inserted this into my home made scroller thingy, clipped onto my handlebars.
Saturday morning, there was no rush to get away, as 100 miles would only be 6 hours in the saddle, at most, and 7 hours with stops. I'll come back to this too! So at about 10 am I set off. Here is the bike outside my house ready for the off:
I did a time trial on Thursday night, and I live on a hill. Before i even got up the hill, I could feel the effects of the TT in my legs!! Oh well, man up and get on with it. I was straight out into gorgeous Suffolk lanes like this:
Not far away is Gestingthorpe, and Gestingthorpe Hall, where Captain Oats ("I'm just going outside, and may be some time"), the polar explorer, lived:
This is Poslingford, but it might just as well have been any other Suffolk village: they're all gorgeous:
It's a little lumpy getting to Newmarket, but once there, it all flattens out, and there is raceing stuff everywhere. This is just one of the many studs I passed:
Now, I was out of the area that I know well, and was having to rely on my navigation notes from cyle.travel. Unfortunately, although the mapping is excellent, the directions automatically generated by the software are not to be relied on at all. Turns are missed off, but more annoyingly, straight roads are counted as turns whenever the road name changes. This is a real nuisance, as you slow down, look around, go back, ask directions.......looking for a non-existent turn. This really broke up the rhythm of the ride, and frustrated the hell out of me. Getting from Newmarket to Soham was a nightmare of navigation, and I ended up adding miles and miles onto the ride, with backtracking, wrong turns and so on. Here's another stop-and-ask-directions location:
North of Newmarket, as the hedges thin out, the land gets flatter, and eventually you get onto the Fens, the wind becomes more of an issue, and I was riding north, straight into a northerly. Just to really get me thinking of Rule 5, an insect landed on my cheek, walked up inside my glasses, and then bit me multiple times around my eye, and then in my eye itself. It was damned agony, and of course it happened on a fast downhill, with nowhere safe to stop, and no way of dealing with it one handed on the move. I had to stop and empty my water bottle into my eye. Ho hum......
North of Soham, I was directed onto a cycle path to Ely, but this was gravel. Not wonderful when you are on a skinny tyred road bike. I crawled along, stopping every few hundred yards to walk across sheep grids (which can shred tyres impressively fast if you ride across them.........DAMHIKT). Again, no rhythm to the ride. The Great Ouse, fenland south of Ely:
I got to Ely by lunchtime:
The famous cathedral, with its octagonal tower. I couldn't go in because there was nowhere to leave my bike safely, and I was so late I didn't really have time anyway:
I walked around Ely market, buying lunch from various artisan stalls. Fed and watered, I headed off east into the Fens. The wind was a really issue now, making the ride quite unpleasant on this completely open, flat land, and then, of course, I got a puncture. Probably in crossing one of many rail crossings. With the silly little pump I carry, I only managed to get about 50lbs of pressure in the rear tyre, and so the ride just a little harder still. I lost the will to take photos!!
Next stop Ixworth, with numerous where-am-I moments, more additional miles, and more frustration. Dropped in to my mother's house with 91 miles on the clock, for more refuelling, my first tea of the day, and a nice half an hour off the bike. I was still 2 hours from home.
Anyway, long story short.......I finally got home at 7.30. 120 miles on the clock at an average of just under 16, which with all the riding around in circles, pushing the bike through Ely for half an hour, and miles of gravel cycle path and sheep grates wasn't too bad, I guess. Despite the gorgeous countryside (most of the time), and the lovely weather, this was probably the hardest ride I've done for years because of the frustrations: the extra 15 miles with navigational cock-ups being the biggest issue. I must have asked 20 different people for directions during the day.
Just to make sure the ride didn't linger negatively in the memory for too long, I went out the following morning with the club and did a pleasant 44 miles, so managed 164 miles altogether over the weekend.
this morning so grabbed the knockabout bike and headed off on my usual Acton Burnell route.
I'll change it to my Just Giving page for the BHF Worcester ride until we've got it sorted.
Looking it up I found only 9 people had ever completed it, so I was slowest
