alex_cycles
Guru
- Location
- Oxfordshire
It has caught me out several times. Not only annoying, the Diversions are no big deal to cars, but an extra 10 miles on the bike can be a tad tiresome
Particularly when tagged onto a 50-mile ride or more
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Particularly when tagged onto a 50-mile ride or more
steverob
Guru
- Location
- Buckinghamshire
The best resource for roadworks, including HS2 related ones, is Causeway's one.network. All the utilities, local councils and highways agencies put their planned locations and dates for road closures on there (including diversions) and if you sign up for a free account, you can narrow down the filters to specific future dates and customise what types of closures you want to know about.
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Supersuperleeds
Legendary Member
- Location
- Leicester
You're still a nasty horrid cheat. I would NEVER do such a thing as drive to the start.
Honestly I think it's the way to go if you're more interested in exploring than mammoth long rides, but everyone sets their own goalposts.
Totally agree with you about the HS2 stuff. It's a bit of a nightmare and many closures seem to be badly advertised. I would be really p'ed off to ride 50 miles to a tile and then not be able to get it.
I can remember someone else saying that, can you @13 rider ?
Was that while he was in the car with me travelling to a start point at his furthest most point ?
alex_cycles
Guru
- Location
- Oxfordshire
Very nice ride. Indoor day today
steverob
Guru
- Location
- Buckinghamshire
So those people who read my inane ramblings on other threads will know that I am in the process of training to do LEJOG next year and that this last week I've been doing a practice tour, involving staying in hotels and trying to go out for reasonably lengthy rides for multiple straight days to see how I get on. It also gave me an opportunity to focus on extending my main cluster, with the intention of building it north from Milton Keynes and Bedford, up to the area near Peterborough where I already had a mini-cluster due to multiple rides of the Tour of Cambridgeshire over the years.
The original plan had me attempting about 400 miles across 8 days with over half those rides being 60+ miles. I had to make some changes on the fly due to a few road closures and then me missing a turn completely on one day that cut out 5 miles and 3 tiles somehow, but was on target until the weekend's weather intervened. Going out in light showers was one thing (which I had done on Thursday) but Saturday's torrential rain and thunderstorms was different matter - ended up waiting until the evening and doing a short ride instead and binning off Sunday entirely.
This meant I ended up with 330 miles across 7 days and while my cluster did now extend to the southern extremity of the ToC rides, it didn't reach all the way to Peterborough as I'd intended. The below animation shows the extent of my cluster as of last week on the first slide, how far it stretches now on the second slide, and then on the third slide I've added in green the extra tiles I was supposed to do but didn't.
In total, 195 new tiles (now 3,421), 156 added to main cluster (now 1,968).
The original plan had me attempting about 400 miles across 8 days with over half those rides being 60+ miles. I had to make some changes on the fly due to a few road closures and then me missing a turn completely on one day that cut out 5 miles and 3 tiles somehow, but was on target until the weekend's weather intervened. Going out in light showers was one thing (which I had done on Thursday) but Saturday's torrential rain and thunderstorms was different matter - ended up waiting until the evening and doing a short ride instead and binning off Sunday entirely.
This meant I ended up with 330 miles across 7 days and while my cluster did now extend to the southern extremity of the ToC rides, it didn't reach all the way to Peterborough as I'd intended. The below animation shows the extent of my cluster as of last week on the first slide, how far it stretches now on the second slide, and then on the third slide I've added in green the extra tiles I was supposed to do but didn't.
In total, 195 new tiles (now 3,421), 156 added to main cluster (now 1,968).
steverob
Guru
- Location
- Buckinghamshire
I think so. Certainly gave me a better idea of what to pack, and more importantly, what not to bother with.
The actual cycling itself went fairly well despite the weather (horrendously hot for two of the days as well as the rain previously mentioned) but apart from a small niggle with one of my knees, which thankfully only happened on one day, I came through relatively unscathed.
Most of the things I was testing out was probably more from the logistical point of view - for example, getting used to hand washing bib shorts in a bathroom sink and working out how quickly I could dry them with the hotel provided hairdryer was one of them!
Nice going, you've done a lot more preparation than I did! For multi-day, I literally did one big two day ride, that I called short from 3, a couple of months before the LEJOG. The route did overlap slightly, but that was incidental. I got as far as the M40
And then less than a month before I did an overnight century to test my dynamo setup.
Epic journey, good luck with it!
steverob
Guru
- Location
- Buckinghamshire
I do have a provisional route and looking at it on a map, I will admit there are a few bits where I'm tempted to grab an extra tile if it's less than 50 yards off my route (especially if it only involves a left turn).Also a fun one to note, I actually did a little bit of tiling while doing LEJOG
