Well,
@Dadam, I, and my pal Bill did the ride today.
The forecast had said that there might be showers for the first half of the ride, but we only felt a few spots from time to time. (But the Calder Valley was looking extremely damp when Bill and I got back and it rained on us as we cycled home from Todmorden station.)
We had lots of sunny intervals later on.
The problem was the wind... A strong, blustery wind! Think about riding a big loop on a windy day... You spend roughly a quarter of the time with a tail-ish wind, a quarter with a head-ish wind, and about half with cross-ish winds. Only the tail-ish quarter feels easy! We weren't flailed by hills today, but we were battered by winds...
There were some places where we were sheltered from the wind. On the rather fine Wetherby-Spofforth cycle path for instance...
Other places were extremely exposed, with the wind whistling across open fields at us. Sorry,
@sevenfourate, I didn't fancy stopping in such places to take photos and then have to battle to catch up with Adam and Bill!
To illustrate the effect of the wind... I was watching my power reading as we cycled along with a crosswind from our right. I was doing 140-150 W. We then turned right and suddenly I was doing 300+W to try to keep going at the same pace. I slowed down but was still having to do 180-200 W!
We had our planned cafe stop on the fringes of Tadcaster. We did manage to get a table outside where we could keep an eye on the bikes.
When we got to Fairburn we found a road closure on our route. The signs banned cyclists as well as vehicles. We ignored the signs! There was a lot of work along that stretch of road but we got through okay. We didn't get any hassle from the workmen. It would have been an unpleasant detour to have gone any other way.
I had decided to do the flattish route in singlespeed mode and I did, using a 40/14 gear throughout the ride. There was only about 870 m (2,850 ft) of ascent on the 101 km (63 mile) route, and most of that was pretty tame, though my legs were starting to feel the strain on the climb to Kippax, and the drag back up to Garforth after the town.
I did take one more photo towards the top of that hill... (It is steeper at the bottom of the climb.)
After that, we whizzed down to Garforth and back to the station. Adam kept us company until the train came.
For once Adam, was not on an ebike. He was riding a really nice Specialized Roubaix that he had bought off someone on the forum for a bargain price. He probably did one of his longest-ever unassisted rides?
Speaking of ebikes and bargain Specialized... Bill and I got talking to another rider on the train to Leeds. He had a fantastic Specialized road ebike. He said that the list price was around £8,000 but he'd got £3,000 off. Still very expensive, but he loves the bike. He had almost given up cycling due to the pain from the injuries that he'd got from a horrible crash**. This bike let the motor ease the pain...
Let's try and have a better turnout for the second edition in September, eh?
** He had double punctured hitting a cattle grid at high speed on the descent north off Fleet Moss in the Yorkshire Dales, causing him to splat himself onto the road!!
