Your greatest cycling achievements and memories?

[Rickshaw Phil]

I've got a few - in no particular order. Apologies if you've heard some of them before:

• Getting over 40mph on the descent of Cothercott Hill. (Noticed when I got home that my tyres were perished and the carcass was fraying)
• First 50 miler - I crashed heavily about halfway round (stick through the spokes) and had to buy cotton wool and TCP to clean myself up. Until then I'd never understood how the pro riders could crash and then get back on to finish the stage. I now know the adrenalin just takes over.
• First 100 miler. Hard work and the weather wasn't ideal but that was a great day. Final figure was 103 miles.
• Riding Garburn Pass. I did this on my knockabout bike when it was new and unmodified - not bad going on a £100 bike.
  
• Riding Asterton Bank. The steepest climb in the local area and commonly listed as being one of the 10 toughest climbs in the country.
• Riding Hardknott and Wrynose Passes. Something I'd wanted to do for ages and finally had a crack at them last summer.
• Riding with a Red Kite: I was crossing the Long Mynd when one of these took off from the heather and flew close alongside me for about a quarter of a mile before wheeling away. Fantastic.

I'm sure I could list plenty more but these are the first ones to come to mind.

 

[welsh dragon]

That would be last August when I got back on a bike for the first time in 45 years. MR WD, and all my neighbours thought I was absolutely mad especially when you consider where I live, and after only 20 minutes I thought so to, but to date the farthest I have gone is 15 miles. Not bad for a golden oldie.

 

[glenn forger]

Tourmalet, deffo. Did it for the second time 7 years ago. The day after I went for a meal and the waitress got chatting and I boasted to her about my ride. "Oh, my dad did that, he's 80" she said. Took the wind out of my sails. French bastard.

 

[swansonj]

LeJog. Not because it was physically a particularly exacting effort - a mate and I youth hostelled it in a bit over two weeks the summer we finished university - but emotionally. There's something about travelling the whole country entirely under your own steam that makes you feel connected to it. I've visited both LE and JOG separately since, but on their own they're just places. It's when you connect them, with the short pitch up and downs along the coast in Cornwall, the changing scenery from Exmoor to the Somerset levels, the industrial legacy of the Midlands, the backbone feeling about the Pennines, border country, a whole second capital city in Edinburgh, then just glorious endless miles of the best scenery on earth in the Highlands, that you feel you have bonded to your country. I don't care how the Scots vote, it will always be one island and my island to me.

 

[MikeG]

Lejog for me too.

There was no great sense of euphoria at the end, because we knew we would make it after only a couple of days of the ride, but nonetheless, it was quite something to have every single cyclist in mainland Britain to the south of us.

 

[Joshua Plumtree]

Hiring a bike from Holkham Hall with my then 10 year old son.

Only rode about a mile and a half on the day, but the experience re-ignited my love for cycling after a gap of 25 years

Three years and five bikes later............

 

[Globalti]

I think the three times I've ridden the Cape Argus race in Cape Town. Stunning scenery, great event, amazing crowd support, thrilling to be able to do it.

 

[MikeG]

I think the three times I've ridden the Cape Argus race in Cape Town. Stunning scenery, great event, amazing crowd support, thrilling to be able to do it.

Biggest sporting event in the world in terms of participation. Or so the Saffers claim.........

 

[Globalti]

I think it's about 32,000 riders. The organisation is superb.

 

[Glow worm]

Certainly one of the most enjoyable for me was riding from here to Harwich along quiet lanes, catching the overnight ferry to Hook of Holland and then the 70 or so mile ride up to Amsterdam for a long weekend a couple of years back.

The trip, including the return leg was almost all in warm sunshine. Cycling on and off ferries is great fun and I loved Amsterdam. Riding around it on my own steed was a joy too. Can't wait to get back there.

 

[Archie_tect]

The C2C with three friends... the remoteness we felt on the route was a real break, despite being within a few miles of familiar places: 3 days of pure escapism.

 

[ColinJ]

I wouldn't say that I have ever achieved much on my bike (or off it for that matter!) but there are a few things that I am pleased about, for example ...

• Offering encouragement to local CycleChatter members who were new to cycling and watching them improve ride by ride until they got fitter than me. There have been many, but @potsy and @Steve H are 2 good examples.
• Riding from Hebden Bridge to Coventry to visit my mum. It wasn't so much the distance ridden in a day (140 miles) as the severity of the terrain. I had 3 climbs to do before I got to tackle Holme Moss, then I did Snake Pass, and then I did the entire length of the lumpy Peak District before finally getting to flatter roads in the Midlands. The ride back a week later was even harder because roadworks on 'the Snake' diverted me over Strines Moor which has the evil climb of Ewden Bank midway. For the first time, I managed to get up that without walking. All of this done was carrying luggage on a bodged on rack.
• Getting back on my bike after an 8 month layoff due to serious illness. I had thought that at first that I wouldn't live, then that I'd barely be able to walk, so getting back on my bike and attacking the hills again felt pretty damn good!

Memories ... There are many, but I'll choose 3 rides - 2 of which were forum rides of mine.

• 'The day the hills disappeared' ... I had ridden the Manchester 100 numerous times unfit and had struggled with the little hills dotted along the route. They are not long and they are not steep (apart from one at Styal, towards the end) but when you are trying to keep up with people much fitter than you, they are hard enough to hurt! Then, one year, I had got my weight down and done 18 months of solid riding before tackling the event. I soon realised that I was on a good day. I was cruising along easily at 20 mph on the flat bits, and just kept going at that speed on the uphills. I went downhill as fast as I could. I was looking like doing a sub-5 hour century but my mate started flagging. I'd wait for him and pace him back up to the group ahead, but then he'd fall back again. After 55 miles of that, we eventually discovered that his rear brake had been dragging! He was knackered and I spent the rest of the ride nursing him to the finish. I think we did something like 5 hrs 45 mins despite the problems. A 5 hour century is still on my cycling 'to do' list!
• My Settle forum ride. It was a lovely route, there was a good turnout and we were lucky with the weather. What forum rides are all about!
• My recent 'comeback' forum ride. I've bored you all with the story of my illness ... well, that was where I got to say 'F**k the illness, I'm back!' and it felt great!

 

[Dave 123]

One of mine would be riding alone in Mallorca on a baking August day, and riding through the cooling drift of an irrigation system. Wonderful!

 

[wait4me]

Falling off my bike
To Explain----- I had a Dawes "Chic Allors" bought for me by Dad after much begging ( I was 12). A few months later I came off on a downhill near Sunny Hunny resulting in 3 weeks in Norwich hospital and some facial plastic surgery. After recovering from this I had had the bike back for a few months and a pedestrian wandered across the road in front of me. My avoiding action meant my front wheel going in one of those culvert things they dig in grass verges. My front wheel stopped suddenly but everything else carried on. And this is the bit----I found I could fall off without getting hurt!!!!!! (I still don't like hills).

 

[mark c]

Getting back on two wheels after a 30 year layoff, teaching my girls to cycle. Cycling with my Eldest as she done her first 50km, and shedding 14 kgs. what a great sport