18th April 2010

Today was the day of the club 125k Audax, I had picked up the route sheet on Wednesday but I could not plot it on bikehike/ridewithgps as I kept getting lost :-( so I was either stuck with navigating myself from paper or tagging along with people that did the ride last year :-)

The weather for the day was perfect....REALLY perfect :-)

0900		5.7	°C	NE	1	mph			11	km	1015 hPa, Falling
1000		8.9	°C	WNW	1	mph			12	km	1015 hPa, Falling
1100		11.7	°C	SSW	2	mph			13	km	1015 hPa, Falling
1200		13.5	°C	ENE	1	mph			17	km	1015 hPa, Falling
1300		15.2	°C	E	2	mph			30	km	1015 hPa, Falling
1400		15.5	°C	NNW	5	mph			22	km	1014 hPa, Falling

I started of with shorts and short sleeve top and arm warmers and was a bit chilled, it was only just 5 degrees when I set off from home at 8:30..

I signed in as soon as I got to the Bath road car park then moved into the sun and chatted with Paul.

At 9 am we all set off, as is my constant desire I zoomed off and overtook everybody (Paul stayed on my back wheel)...I sort of knew the first bits of the route :-)

Thankfully as we reached Easton Lane we were overtaken by Andy and David and a nice group of ten or so formed...most of the start of my ride looked like this.....

I'm not complaining it was a cracking pace and they knew the way :-) The whole ride turned into a very social, enjoyable and fairly quick chain gang ride :-)
The first Control was at Sainsburys in Frome, we all self certified our Brevet cards, as I have reached that age I stopped to water the horses..

After Frome we ascended the only major climb of the ride 'Gare Hill' and I was very pleased with myself not to be dropped or lagging behind on the hill, in fact I got to the top reasonably quickly and ahead of the game :-) I even had time to stop and take photies of everybody else in our little group going by :-)

The countryside and weather was perfect, and sitting in a group I was being dragged along nicely :-)

We passed Shear Water and before I knew it we were at Longleat...

We all decided against stopping for a brew and a cake at Longleat instead opting to stop and sit in the sun at Brokerswood.

I have done a few rides through Longleat, but I normally stick to the roads I know, It was great to find that you can cycle next to the Lions enclosure and past the Rhino's, Hippo's and the Gorilla Island...

For some reason I found the climbs out of Longleat quite challenging, but I still managed to keep with the group....once we were out of the climbs I was sailing along again :-)

We passed a rather nice looking pub on the way to Brokerswood and somebody mentioned Cider :-) Now I was all up for stopping for a pint of the lovely cool apple juice...but the rest were not :-(

So I put the Cider thought to the back of my mind....but tea is just NOT the same...

We stopped at the Cafe at Brokerswood...David had remembered that it was his shout..I had bought the last teas and cake a few weeks ago...

I did the decent thing and reserved some prime sun soaked real estate (Chair and Tables)..he delivered my Bacon Roll and Cake to me :-)

Apparently he did not have enough hands to bring my tea as well, but as I was settled in the sun he did the decent thing and fetched it for me :-)

I do somehow think I AM going to pay big time for this charitable act....

After a rather pleasant sit in the sun it was a short (17 mile) ride to the Chippenham Sainsburys and the end of the Audax..

Andy picked up all of the Brevet cards from our little group to take to the club evening on Wednesday..

It was a nice short cycle home...then I cut the grass and finished filling in the pond in the garden...

Finally I had a shower and then sat in the garden with a nice cool glass of cider :-)


The Garmin had today's ride as 79.08 miles in 4 hours 25 minutes with an average speed of 18 mph, route here...