Your ride today.... (part 1)

[ColinJ]

PS As I came back into Hebden Bridge, there was stationary traffic at a red traffic light ahead of me so I began to slow down. A motorist took exception to me being in the road ahead of him and accelerated past with his hand on the horn, swerved left and braked to a stop about 6 inches from the car in front. His female passenger had her window open and the sun roof was slid back. She was staring down at the floor, looking mortified. The driver was staring straight ahead looking angry. I filtered slowly by on the left of the car and said "What's up mate, is the old brain injury playing up again?" Not fancying a confrontation once the lights changed, I turned left down the pedestrianised part of the town centre (on which cyclists may proceed with caution).

What is up with those drivers?

Ha - I have just read watchtowergoggs' report - I repeat - What is up with those drivers?

 

[cyberknight]

Windy quick spin , couple of PBs and a second place .
http://www.strava.com/activities/181031939#4232469945

 

[Glow worm]

Horrendous ride today

Sounds rough - hope your next ride is a little less eventful!

 

[Toeclip]

Found it a wee bit chilly around my knee this morning as I set off at 6am, but soon warmed up with 33 miles out to Paper Mill Lock at Little Baddow for a cuppa and 42 miles to reach home.

 

[Elybazza61]

Extended club run today with two other members ended with a first 100 mile ride;safe to say I am now aching quite a lot after being buffeted about by some good old fen winds.Deserve some wine after that ride I think.

http://www.strava.com/activities/181034458

 

[Deleted member 23692]

Just a mile or so today round the local park to see if sticking a new cassette and chain on the MTB has cured the skipping gears AND that I've set the gears up right..

... and the good news is that everything works as it should

With the weather as it is, 'about a mile' was far enough

 

[Ajay]

Blustery 40 miles over Longridge, Beacon and Harris End Fells.

 

[ColinJ]

Blustery 40 miles over Longridge, Beacon and Harris End Fells.

VERY blustery!

Where is Harris End Fell? (I have ridden the other two lots of times.)

 

[srw]

A little ride out to Whitstable for breakfast. I had my tandem legs on but with my nice light solo bike underneath me, so I was able to pretend to be @McWobble and cane it past the peloton after marking junctions.

I'd like to place it on record that I was first to order (the other members of the front group locked their bikes downstairs), and had made substantial inroads into my sausage, bacon and eggs by the time others whom I'd dropped only a few miles earlier turned up. A single-speed Brompton with titanium components may be light, but it's never going to out-run a roadie over several miles.

The weather was perfect, although a little more sun on arrival would have been nice. Still, that meant there was more incentive to rehydrate inside.

 

[Jefferson Meriwether]

Had a nice little ride yesterday covering old ground. I almost didn't set out on my bike but glad I did.

I bimbled into Crewkerne and on up to Glastonbury. Previously when I've cycled through Glastonbury I've stopped there and wandered up the Tor but this time I stopped only to get some money out of the hole-in-the-wall. Whilst getting my money my Garmin suddenly decided that, rather than being stationary, my bike was actually travelling at 9mph. I can just imagine one of the locals would possibly say it was lay lines or something like that affecting my Garmin

I traveled the back roads between Glastonbury and Wells (I got chatting to a couple of other cyclists whilst double checking my map.) then up over the Mendips through Wookey and on into Bristol via the Suspension Bridge.

I normally drop down into the city centre past the BRI (Been to the BRI A&E to have a finger sorted out after coming off my bike last year .) but yesterday I went down Park Road past College Green for a change. As I went along Baldwin Street I popped into the tobacconists to get some chewing tobacco; in a strange way it was a pleasure to see the owner happily smoking away indoors. We were both bemoaning the Governments draconian attitude towards smokers whilst at the same time happily heavily taxing them.

It was mid afternoon when I got to Bristol and I still had plenty of energy in my legs and a fair few hours of daylight in front of me so i decided to point Korma towards the S&D cycle path and make my way to Bath in a leisurely manner. It was very nice indeed to see so many cyclists,joggers,walkers using the path/cycle way. I got to Bath about 5pm and treated myself to a takeaway Latte before catching the train home.

I clocked up 82 miles on the ride; 88 miles in all including the 6 miles from Axminster station to my home. When I got to Bath I still felt energetic enough to clock up a century, the only problem was I couldn't offhand think of a 20 mile route that would have ended up somewhere with a railway station other than cycle back to Bristol and around the centre for a few miles; I didn't much fancy cycling back to Bristol just for the sake of clocking up miles.

On the train from Salisbury to Axminster I was sitting diagonally opposite a young lady. At one point she got a bag of sweets out of her rucksack and caught me quickly glance up from my book to the bag of sweets; she offered me one & I happily accepted. I would have offered her something in return but the only thing I had to offer was some of my chewing tobacco; I seriously doubted she'd have wanted any so I simply remained silent whilst enjoying the sweet and my Inspector Rebus novel.




Roll on next Friday when I'll be off on my next bike ride (Again retracing an old route, one I did two years ago.) which will, all being well, give me this years century ride.

 

[Spartak]

Short ride this morning out to the start of the Sodbury Sportif, rode with some clubmates until the top of the 'Hawkesbury Howler' climb then headed back to Bristol via the A46, turned off to take in another one of the climbs the 'Dodington Drag'.
Great to see info boards before each climb

http://www.strava.com/activities/181310874

 

[TheDoctor]

My plans for a reasonable ride with breakfast were derailed by the rain...
I've only managed a slightly-lumpy 7 miles to retrieve the car. Definitely need some SPDs for the Brompton.

 

[Rasmus]

First chance to go exploring since moving to the south west a couple of weeks ago, and there was no doubt on where to go - Cheddar Gorge. Plotted out a route on the Garmin, trying out the turn directions on top of the breadcumbs. Worked mostly well, with only a couple of navigational mishaps that were swiftly corrected.

I picked up the tail end of a sportive going up the gorge, which provided lots of scalping opportunities. Not entirely fair, since they would have done a lot more miles than me before hitting the climb, but it made me feel good about the performance . That feeling was swiftly deflated upon return home, as I still find myself outside the top 1000 on Strava - There aren't many hills in Scotland that have 1000 attempts, and here I have 5000+ people to compete with! I did shoot straight to the top of the CC leaderboard, though, so that's nice

http://www.strava.com/activities/181394675

 

[thetribe]

Had a couple of weeks off the bike due to holiday in France, however while we were over there we managed to hire a couple of bikes and get out on one day, we cycled to Briare and cycled over the Pont-canal de Briare. Lovely place to visit and lovely place to cycle. 20 very leisurely miles in total and a few coffees, croissants and beers

IMG_8620 by thetribe007, on Flickr
DSCF7843 by thetribe007, on Flickr
DSCF7857 by thetribe007, on Flickr
IMG_8621 by thetribe007, on Flickr
IMG_8638 by thetribe007, on Flickr

You'll notice that I'm behind the camera, suppose I should put one scary one up.

 

[TigerT]

First decent wether for a few weeks today, so set out early from Zurich with a friend for a 60km loop Had only done it once before and had made a few mistakes on the route, so was hoping to find the right way this time.

Headed out into the countryside alongside Lake Greifensee and instead of looping around it as normal, took a left and headed toward Wetzikon. Found the correct way through this tike avoiding a very steep and unnecessary hill. Heading out of Wetizikon, joined the cycle route to Pfaffikon and headed down to Lake Pfaffikersee for a drink stop. From there there is an excellent long straight incline for about 3 kilometres before turning off to Effretikon and down to the woods at Brutisellen. Through the woods (not ideal for road bikes - I'll go around next time) and we were on the home stretch, decided to take a slight detour for a quick lunch, then joined the road we started out on at Schwamendingen and over the hill back home.

Beautiful Weather and an excellent ride.

The twins taking a rest under a tree

Looking out toward the mountains (which you can just see top left) at the drink stop.

Heading through the woods - It got a lot rougher