26 Nov All things bright and beautiful
I used to have two KOMs on Strava. I set them up on the dead end lane leading to my house on the erroneous supposition that no one would challenge me on it. I was astonished to find that a number of local cyclists made a pilgrimage to this obscure muddy lane that goes nowhere but for eight months no one has been able to beat me. Until yesterday....
I have no idea why I am upset about it. It doesn't matter.
Far better to tell you about a bright, beautiful and extremely cold ride to Bodmin and back pursuing a 100k Audax tick.
I try and stay in the present moment when cycling and not think about how far the next hill is, when I can stop for a rest and how much further it is to go. I set the Wahoo to just give me gradient and speed. There is enough to think about with frosty puddles glinting and hinting at ice, thick layers of leaf litter across the lanes and as always, the ever pervasive mud tracked off the field entrances and up the lanes. In the shaded valley floors the temperature is close to zero and my fingers start to numb but up on the hill tops, away from the trees, the sun's warmth has melted the frost and I can feel a warm solar touch on my back.
The lanes are quiet. Just the buzz of the tyres on the road, scoldings from disturbed magpies and the high pitched kee of a circling buzzard. The villages tick off. I use each as the next destination, not thinking beyond it. I tell myself just to get to the next village and see how you feel, see whether you want to keep going. Destinations follow each other: Tresillian, Probus, Grampound Road, Coombe. In between are the scattered farms and those isolated houses built for reasons that are not clear to me in places that make no sense. The small town of St Stephen arrives, gateway to the 'Clay Country', a landscape of working and abandoned clay quarries that creates a whitewashed moonscape that tourists never see.
Uphill now through Treviscoe and St Dennis, isolated hill villages dominated by mountains of waste from the clay mining. Down and then up to Roche, a brief scent of fresh pasty as I pass the bakery makes me feel hungry but I am not in the mood for stopping. On through narrow and then narrower lanes that twist and turn and climb and fall. Every bend is blind and I have to slow almost to a stop on each one because there are cars and some vans about, tradesmen moving around, tractors pulling trailers of silage and leaving the lane even dirtier than before. On through Bugle and past the food processing factory and outside the village are fields of static caravans for the Portuguese and Latvian workers who make up the majority of those working in that factory.
The sun is fully up now. Gloves removed. Just a base layer and windproof needed although under the trees and out of the sun I shiver.
Past Lanhydrock House, a National Trust property where you have to book a car park space in the week before the visit. So the roads leading to it are jammed with parked cars from people who haven't booked. Stubborn people the Cornish. Don't like change.
Onto the NCN trail through beech woods and across the special Sustrans bridge over the A30 and onto the dead leaf slippery and green mossed trail that leads into the town of Bodmin. Up a steep hill and then down. So Cornish this constant change of height and gradient. So hard to settle into a rhythm. Now the Camel Trail, busy with walkers and horses, gritty, leaf covered and extremely cold. All the frigid air from the Camel valley has settled on the trail. There is a layer of mist on the river alongside the trail and the grass and trees are white with frost even at mid day. I am pleased to see the sun again as I leave the trail and head up the hill beyond. The bike has gathered a layer of grit from the trail with a moustache on the head tube. It has jammed the mudguards which scrape and wheeze and I can feel the friction when I puff uphill. I look for puddles to wash it off but in contrast to the previous week when the lanes were wet and deep in water, today it is dry. I shake the guards to no avail. In the end I have to remove them and clean them out with my fingers. It is a sticky mixture of leaf litter, grit and clay. My next bike will have full length mudguards and proper fittings!
And more frame space, those tyres are a bit bigger than the manufacturer suggests is feasible.
A long uphill, longer than I remembered, takes me back to near Roche and then it is across Goss Moor on the old A30, now a cycle trail to Indian Queens, Fraddon and St Enoder where I take shelter from a biting NE wind in the church porch. Fifty miles done, fifteen to go. Time for a sandwich and drink.
On and on along back lanes, deep in mud and slippery so I need to be cautious. The villages tick off, Summercourt, Mitchell, uphill, down hill and then savagely uphill to St Newlyn East. I can see a cyclist ahead of me, the first one I have seen all day. He is wearing shorts and has bare arms. I am not especially warm with tights and layers and I cannot understand how he doesn't feel the cold, especially now the sun is sliding down across a clear November afternoon sky and the temperature is dropping. Slowly I reel him in, he gets ahead on the downhills as I am still on the uphill and then I catch up, each time a bit nearer. Just as I get close enough to speak to him, to find out what part of the Arctic he comes from, he turns off leaving me alone again. On to Zelah then and then across the A30, scurrying across the dual carriageway at a gap in the hedge to a farm lane opposite. Avoids a pointless and quite steep hill doing this.
It is definitely getting colder but I know the next few miles quite well and it is finally just the steep hill into Truro and up to my lane. The lane I used to have a KOM on. I continue to pretend not to be bothered - and then ride it as fast as I can.
But I am still 23 seconds off the pace of the new KOM. On a two minute segment that is too much of a gap to close.
Until next time..........
Or maybe wait unt the summer when the surface is dry.......
But no really, I am not bothered. No, it is really is not important. I can't believe someone cycled out of their way to grab it though. What kind of person gets bothered by a little crown on their Strava feed anyway?
I might have another go tomorrow....
. Best to just ignore that sort.
) and 11.3 mph average.
( she was riding 1 handed looking at her phone at the time 
. Home via Cossington ,Sileby and Swithland . 52 miles in the bag set a few Strava prs while being towed along . Just got in from washing the bike which was filthy
