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Saturday, October 31, 2009

31st October 2009 (Saturday)

Short post…

I am at Minehead, chilling out ready for tomorrows 'Beast'.

I have already signed in, I hope to set off early…7am

Friday, October 30, 2009

30th October 2009

No cycling for me today, I had to get on and do the chores I have been saving up all week :-(

The oil change on the car went better than expected :-) I then spent the next few hours cleaning the bikes, The Dawes was full of mud from yesterday, the Merida needed a good clean and fettle ready for Sunday (Exmoor Beast :-) and the Peugeot hadn't been cleaned in a long time.

After the bike cleaning I moved on to house cleaning, my office had turned into a mini dustbin...

Thursday, October 29, 2009

29th October 2009

The plan was to have a pleasant cross country ride on the Dawes Hybrid, I didn't want to push myself to hard but I also didn't want to sit on my arse and do nothing all day...

What I had forgotten was.....OFF ROAD MILES ARE BLOODY HARD WORK! when you stop pedaling you stop! to go in a straight line you have to work at it, the harder you pedal the more the back wheel spins.....and...the Dawes has no suspension and every undulation in the surface is felt.

I started out on NSN 403 (It used to be 4 but was stealthily relabelled during the summer), It starts out as little more than a farm track.

The goes through some nice woodland

And eventually pops out along side a part of the Wilts Berks Canal

Because the stretch of water isn't joined to any other bits of water and there are no boats on it, there is nothing to stop the weed growth, hence it looks a lot green!

After a short bit of road through Calne the cycle way heads back out cross country, some of the cycle path can barely be called a cycle path at all!

Just after the Sand works the cycle way has been diverted through a boggy field...It used to at least be gravelled and hard standing (I think a complaint letter is going to Sustrans)

I terminated the cross country muddy puddle as soon as the cycle way came parallel to the Compton Bassett road, I nipped through a gap in the hedge :-)

After a few moments of de-clogging the wheels and brakes from the mud I was off again :-)

The next trail stint was much better :-)

Then onto a short stretch of tree lined and very quiet road...

Then it was back across fields....(And yes this is still the same cycle way NSN 403)

At Avebury I joined the road system again, I joined the A4 for a short stint then turned onto the quiet rural road at West Kennet, then I backtracked my route yesterday to Alton Barnes (Back up the long drawn out hill and down a quick descent)

I arrived at The Barge Inn at HoneyStreet to meet up with Wifey for lunch...(It took 2 hours 14 to do the 23 or so miles)

After a nice Ham, Egg n Chips lunch (including a couple of pints of my favourite Cider) I started on the home journey, the plan was to follow the Kennet and Avon canal back to Melksham, I off course started of in the wrong direction, after a little on road detour I managed to rejoin the canal and was heading in the right direction :-)

The canal path was very slippery and very bumpy - probably better suited to proper mountain bike tyres instead of the Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres I had fitted (They were also inflated to a good road pressure....perhaps that wasn't wise)

After a few interesting moments I made it to Devizes and the Cane Hill Locks, as it is a more popular area the cycle path became much smoother and faster :-)



After a few more miles I turned off the canal paths and headed into Melksham and re-joined NSN 403 - This time along the bank of the River Avon

I followed the cycleway through Lacock and along another part of the disjointed Wilts Berks Canal

Then it was just a short ride back home...

The Garmin had the ride as 49.43 miles in 4 hours 8 mins with an average speed of 11.9 mph, route here...

I really enjoyed today's ride, it was much harder work than I expected, every mile had to be worked for! but it was nice and I managed to stay away from traffic and other people for 90% of it :-)

I followed some very historic routes, The Calne Branch Line, The Wilts Berks Canal, The Ridge Way, The Kennet and Avon, The River Avon... It was great :-)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

28th October 2009

Another lovely sunny day :-)

I had to go and do some chores at the mother in laws so I thought I would cycle over to Wootton Bassett in an indirect scenic fashion, have lunch :-) do the chores then cycle home in another indirect scenic fashion :-)

I had the route all planned nicely yesterday evening...I got up, cooked some porridge for breakfast, chilled for a while, then thought ohh I must lube the bike chain!!!

Now as you may or may not know I can't just lube a chain without cleaning it! so I took the chain of and cleaned it in White Spirit, then I thought I may as well wash the bike......

This did mean I didn't get going from home until about an hour later than planned...So I ended up modifying the route slightly to cut a few miles of the journey to Wootton B. I also forgot to fill any drink bottles up and I did the whole ride dry.

Again I chose quiet single track rural roads, not quite as green today though!


I started out heading in completely the opposite direction to Wooton Bassett, then followed a few roads that I discovered on a cycle club leisure ride...

Why do steep hills never photograph? this is actually a 14% gradient....

Looking back at the top of the hill...the sign proves it...
Even with the rural roads and hills I was making much better progress than yesterday...
I was soon through Devizes and heading towards Alton Barnes, I have always liked the impressive hills surrounded by very flat land...

Unfortunately at Alton Barnes the route turns left and up one of the sets of hills...

Fortunately it is a quick climb from 500ft to 750ft then a fantastically drawn out descent of 6 miles where my speed was hovering around 25 mph :-)

I cycled through Marlborough then headed out on the Marlborough Road towards Broad Hinton

After a long draw out climb I arrived at the top of Hackpen Hill, where the road can be seen stretching out below the fantastically quick decent :-)

I made it to Wootton Basset in 2 hours 50 having covered just over 43 miles...

I had lovely Ham sandwiches and Egg sandwiches the spent a few quality hours pruning a Bay Tree with my chainsaw :-)

At 3pm I set off home...I headed out across country to Grittenham and Dauntsey, it looked like I was coming up short in miles and the weather was sooooooo nice so I turned right instead of left and headed towards the Somerfords, then cross country home.

The Garmin had the ride as 64.46 miles in 3 hours 39 mins with an average speed of 16.1 mph, route here...

Tomorrows plan is to do a little bit of trail riding on the Hybrid (Dawes 601), I plan to head out to the Ridgeway via NSN Route 4, then cross country (May get a little muddy!) to Alton Barnes have lunch at HoneyStreet, follow the Kennet and Avon Canal back to Devizes finally hop on to some local rural roads back to Lacock and finish on NSN Route 4 back home (Should be fun and a little slower than hammering around on the road bike!) Planed route here...

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

27th October 2009

Had a plan for a nice and easy ride from Chippenham to Cheddar, meet wifey and daughter for lunch, wander around aimlessly then drive home.....Plan worked...but the ride to Cheddar was far from easy!

I guess it is not wise to head in a South Westerly direction when its a Southerly wind!
1100 Medium-level Cloud 14.7 °C SSE 15 mph
25 km 1018 hPa, Rising
1200 Medium-level Cloud 15.1 °C SSE 15 mph
30 km 1018 hPa, Falling
1300 Medium-level Cloud 15.8 °C SSE 14 mph
40 km 1017 hPa, Falling

Saying that, I planned a nice route taking me across country to Bath then onto the Bath & Bristol cycle way, then followed Regional Route 10 to Chew Magna Lake then across country to Cheddar :-)

Some of the roads were a tadge green...

I would normally go to Bath following the A4 but I thought cross country would be better, it was a wise decision (Although a bit slower due to the rural, slippery and leave strewn roads)..I saw Box Tunnel from a new and interesting angle.

And zoomed in a bit...

After a few more rural lanes...

I popped out at Bath...The traffic was stationary...I zapped up the Bus/Cycle-lane at a cracking pace...I really do not understand why people attempt to drive through city centres?

I took a few obligatory photo's of Bath architecture...


The it was on to the main Bristol Bath cycle-way

I held a very good 20 mph + pace on the cycle way, although it could have been very treacherous if I needed to stop as some stretches were very leaf strewn...

All to soon I reached the Avon Cycleway (Regional Route 10) and things slowed down a lot!

The roads were strewn with a lot of storm derbies and the down-hill's were treacherous, shame as there were plenty of climbs and I could never get a speed advantage from the descents...

At Pensford I took a few photographs of the Pensford via-duct.

It is amazing to think of how much effort must have gone into making the bridge, It was built in 1873 and closed less than a 100 years later in 1968
The Avon Cycle-Way goes right under it, and then climbs...and climbs...and climbs...

After some time I ended up at Chew Magna Lake.

I guess it was because I had only planned a 45 mile ride, and it should have only taken 2 1/2 hours, It had already taken 2 1/2 hours to get here and I still had 12 miles left to go....and the biggest climb of the day...

Eventually I was on the rather nice downhill of Cheddar Gorge, and not even the headwind was slowing me down :-) (I guess mainly because the Gorge walls were stopping ANY wind...


I was expecting to get to Cheddar at about 12 pm, I eventually landed at nearer 1 pm :-(

The first call of action was to have lunch...

As I had ridden from Chippenham to Cheddar, I couldn't resist having Cheddar cheesy Chips n Ham :-)

We then had a walk through Cheddar and went into Gough's cave

And after a nice Cream Tea and a few more walks we headed for home....

The Garmin had the ride as 42.93 miles in a shocking 3 hours 13 minutes with a rather poor average speed of 13.3 mph, route here...

Monday, October 26, 2009

26th October 2009

I'm on holiday :-) w00t nothing to do......

Well er..um except (I still have to do the oil change on the car....and need to finish sorting the network...and want to install Windoze 7....and want to go for a decent cycle ride everyday..and...and..and..)

I removed the Untangle firewall from the network this morning, it had been running well but was toooooooo slow, I re-installed it with Smoothwall and swapped the 3rd D-link Gigabit NIC with the Realtek Gigabit NIC in the Freenas server, once the main network was back up and running I went for a cycle ride :-)

The sun was shining and the roads were empty :-) although there did appear to be a 360 degree headwind...

I thought I would start where I left off yesterday with a hill climb, although the local climbs are NOTHING like the Dartmoor equivalent...

I thought I would try and squeeze a nice 30 miles in the 2 hours I had available, I didn't want to push myself to hard as yesterdays ride was very tough...

I stopped and took a few pictures on the way round (Thought I would make up for the lack of pictures yesterday)

The only problem with this time of the year is that you work up a nice sweat on the climbs to get bloody cold on the descents...

The trees are still holding on to their leaves


It looked like I was going to come up short on the distance so I extended the return out a little to Studley, it is NOT a fast 12% descent unfortunately as the road is narrow and has a fair bit of loose gravel.

Also as is the case where there is a steep descent there is a steep climb to follow...

The Garmin had today's ride as 30.45 miles in 2 hours 1 minute with an average speed of 15.1 mph, route here...

Sunday, October 25, 2009

25th October 2009

We got to Bovey Tracey at about 4:30pm yesterday (traffic was a nightmare), when we got there we checked in, dropped the stuff of in the room then went for a walk :-)

When we got back to the inn we had a drink and waited for food to start (6pm)

After a nice starter (Garlic Mushrooms) and a main meal (Lasagne), I had a couple more ciders then retired to bed…

I woke up far to early this morning…although I was a year older (41 today) and the clocks had changed…cooked breakfast wasn't available until 8:30 and I was booked in for the second wave of Dartmoor Devil starters at 9am.

After milling around for an hour or two, we ventured downstairs at 8 and had cereal and toast…I decided to forego cooked breakfast as timings would be tight.

At 8:30 I removed the bike from the back of the car, fitted the RaceBlades and prepared myself for the challenge ahead - mainly by milling about and looking cool :-)

At 9 we were off, we left the Cromwell Arms, turning right out of the car park and up the first steep hill of the day.
(Me in the far distance with Orange and White top and cool shades on :-)

(Me in Orange and White top)

I started of with quite a good speed and found myself well ahead of the pack, until the first long grinding climb where I was passed by half a dozen people.

The first control point was very early on at 10 miles'ish, near the top of another long climb,I got my card stamped and had a nice piece of cake :-) I left the control before most of the people that passed me.

The ride across the top of the moor was great, the descent however was terrifying! The road was narrow, very narrow, it was green, it had leaves on it, it had water running down it…I was going down it breaking like a girl, as I came around a corner the back wheel skidded, the front wheel skidded, the back drifted round to the right, I unclipped my left foot and was travelling like a speedway rider, unfortunately I wasn't stopping! Thankfully the front wheel bogged down in the bank next to a wall, unfortunately my left knuckle grazed along the wall.

I approached all of the later descents with a bit more respect after this.

The half way point checkpoint was at a rather nice pub, and was full of cyclists, I had caught up with the main pack of 8am starters! I had my card stamped and set of on a really hard ride across the open moor with a killing headwind.

The penultimate checkpoint was at a rather nice cafe, were I took the opportunity to sugar load on Coke and a Mars bar. I started to hear stories at the Cafe about the sting in the tail of the Devil - Widacombe Hill. Again I set of from the cafe before anybody else.

The ride back across the moor was awesome, open road and a stonking tail wind, then another 20% climb that even the tailwind didn't ease. At the top I had another smile as it was another stonking descent, I thought that must have been Widacombe Hill, and as such it was plain sailing 8 mile descent to the finish…

I was wrong! I started to see signs for Widacombe…the hill was another 20% energy sapper, but I conquered it, then it really was plain sailing to the end.

The final checkpoint was a pub called, The Kestor Inn, where I had a well earned pint of cider and a plate of pasty and chips.

It was a fantastic day out, the toughest 70 miles I have ever done, but really enjoyable. Talking to some of the other riders at the end they say it was the toughest Dartmoor Devil route that they have done.

The Garmin had the ride as 69.97 miles in 5 hours 41 minutes (I could do 100 miles in that time!). It was a bloody tough ride but very enjoyable :-) The GPS track can be found here...

Ohhh just to show how tough it was here's the Elevation profile (Miles and feet)