I'm not surprised; it isn't sounding good for Saturday. You may make a reasonable recovery by then but, even with the flattish route, would that be 100 km worth of recovery...?
I'll still do the ride even if you can't make it, but it would be nice if you
could. I will be coming down again in mid-August and will organise something then. Maybe this route, or maybe something more challenging.
I went out today and recced the first part of the route to check for flooding. There were several places that had clearly been under water recently but nearly all of it had gone. There was quite a lot of mud and gravel in places but this was the only iffy bit that I encountered...
View attachment 690000
That is at Nether Exe. There was a pronounced camber to the road so the centre section was almost clear. The water there was only a couple of cms deep for a metre or two.
The section of the route by the Clum was fine. Some gravel and dried mud on the road, a few small puddles; that was all.
I turned down the lanes from Stoke Canon and headed back towards Thorverton via Nether Exe. This time though I was not paying attention when I came back along that mucky lane - I had things on my mind. I was cycling towards the camera on the RHS of the road as we are looking at it. Suddenly,
BANG - PSSSSST!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had hit a big, sharp-edged pothole hidden in the water. The tyre was flat before I even cleared the puddle!
View attachment 689999
Oh, deep joy!
The one consolation was that Zaffira Pro tyres are an incredibly easy fit on Mavic Aksium rims... I squeezed the tyre all round, then gripped the tyre between my right thumb and forefinger and simply peeled it away from the rim!
Did I mention how deep that water was? This is what the tyre and tube looked like once I had removed them, and this was 30 metres beyond the waterlogged section of road!
View attachment 689998
I poured that out, then whirled the tyre around in the air like a helicopter rotor blade to cause 90+% of the muddy water to fly off. I wiped the tyre inside and out with a handful of dock leaves to make sure that no grit had got trapped before I put a new tube in***.
Thanks to the easy removal and replacement of the tyre it was turning out to be a very quick repair. Then something completely unexpected, and almost unheard of happened... It was a quiet, narrow lane, and I was taking up some of it while doing my repair. I heard a car coming and looked up... Yes - I needed to move everything out of the way to let it by. I shunted my stuff onto the verge and breathed in while the car squeezed by. It headed towards the puddles, then stopped and went into reverse. It came to rest just in front of me and the young driver wound his window down and asked if I was ok? Did I need help? I thanked him and said that I was nearly finished, but thanks anyway. He said that he would give me a lift if I needed it. I slotted the wheel back in, thanked him again, and showed him that the bike was now roadworthy.
I am not used to motorists doing that kind of thing... Friendly folk in Devon!
I am going to sacrifice a bit of comfort and put an extra 0.5 bar of pressure in front and back to reduce the risk of another snakebite on rough lanes.
*** I just set an alarm on my phone to remind me to repair the old tube tomorrow, or put a new spare in my backpack if the old tube is too badly damaged. (I didn't look at it when I removed it from the wheel - I was in a hurry to get going again.)