gaz
Cycle Camera TV
- Location
- South Croydon
yet again someone wanted to race today, not one to say no. I topped out at 28 and left the guy for dead. He caught up when i got stuck in traffic and he mounted the pavement. Victory to me i say.
Your ride today.... (part 1)
- Thread starter gbb
- Start date
- Status
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
HJ
Cycling in Scotland
- Location
- Auld Reekie
HelenD123 said:
Damn missed that, too busy spending money...
HLaB
Marie Attoinette Fan
I went out with a really fast group tonight we were hitting nearly 33mph on the flat but fortunately I saw a mate in a layby and had an excuse to drop back and we both had a really enjoyable ride.
ACS
Legendary Member
- Location
- Just below the snow line
My usual Tuesday crawl up as many steep lumpy bits that I can manage without pedalling into the closest water filled ditch. 19 miles, 1700 feet of up and even managed to hang onto the back of a fully kitted roadie who had been shelled out of the back of a group. Nice of him to paced me to the group into a brisk headwind. I would have taken turn but he wanted to drop me so I never got the chance. Knew I had got under his skin when he looked back and mouthed 'fcukin tourist.'
Group where out of Largo and allowed me to tag on for a couple of miles until they decided to race each other homeward. Thanks for the chat it was great to be recognised and not ignored.
Group where out of Largo and allowed me to tag on for a couple of miles until they decided to race each other homeward. Thanks for the chat it was great to be recognised and not ignored.
HLaB
Marie Attoinette Fan
satans budgie said:
Keith Oates
Janner
- Location
- Penarth, Wales
Left home this morning when the light was still very dim, due to the black clouds and heavy rain. After the first 200 metres and some rhythm in the legs the rest of the journey was quite enjoyable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Turned my usual 6.5 mile commute into a 25 mile commute last night.
I wanted to go from Work in Willesden over to Ruislip, where I have a bike fitting next week, to work out the route.
I took a wrong turn in Harlsden. Not a good start, especially as it's the way I used to go everyday. Went through Wembley and up to South Harrow.
This is where I was supposed to take a left and head straight across to Ruislip, but knew something was wrong when I started seeing signs to North Harrow and more alarmingly Golders Green
Decided now would be a good time to stop and get my bearings. Signs to North and South Harrow, Pinner, Northwood but no Ruislip.
But don't panic, I've come prepared. I printed out a few pages of maps to help me get from South Harrow to Ruislip...mmmmmm....but I didn't print any maps for Pinner and North Harrow.
So while standing at a bus stop, trying to work out which direction to go, I see a Cycle Network sign to Ruislip, that'll do.
Those signs soon dry out though and I'm on my own again. I could keep heading west, but no sign of the sun through the clouds, so no help there.
I soon arrive in Pinner. That's it, I've had enough of aimlessly cycling around. Phone comes out, and I locate my position on Google maps, then locate Ruislip and find a nice easy way to get there.
What should have been a quick 10 mile recce is now 15 miles and I stop by the bike shop for a quick munch (I'm glad I bought that cereal bar from work now).
Last 10 miles home are nice and easy, and mostly downhill. I quick detour through Osterley Park (not great for road bikes but very relaxing) to wind down and home.
What I hoped would be an informative 20 mile/1.5 hours ride, turned into a 25 mile / 2.5 hours orienteering excercise.
Absolutel exhausted this morning. Not so much the distance, but constant concentration needed when your trying to find your way.
Here's the route
Trouble is I still don't know the best way to get to Ruislip, so I'll probably have to do it again on Monday
I wanted to go from Work in Willesden over to Ruislip, where I have a bike fitting next week, to work out the route.
I took a wrong turn in Harlsden. Not a good start, especially as it's the way I used to go everyday. Went through Wembley and up to South Harrow.
This is where I was supposed to take a left and head straight across to Ruislip, but knew something was wrong when I started seeing signs to North Harrow and more alarmingly Golders Green
Decided now would be a good time to stop and get my bearings. Signs to North and South Harrow, Pinner, Northwood but no Ruislip.
But don't panic, I've come prepared. I printed out a few pages of maps to help me get from South Harrow to Ruislip...mmmmmm....but I didn't print any maps for Pinner and North Harrow.
So while standing at a bus stop, trying to work out which direction to go, I see a Cycle Network sign to Ruislip, that'll do.
Those signs soon dry out though and I'm on my own again. I could keep heading west, but no sign of the sun through the clouds, so no help there.
I soon arrive in Pinner. That's it, I've had enough of aimlessly cycling around. Phone comes out, and I locate my position on Google maps, then locate Ruislip and find a nice easy way to get there.
What should have been a quick 10 mile recce is now 15 miles and I stop by the bike shop for a quick munch (I'm glad I bought that cereal bar from work now).
Last 10 miles home are nice and easy, and mostly downhill. I quick detour through Osterley Park (not great for road bikes but very relaxing) to wind down and home.
What I hoped would be an informative 20 mile/1.5 hours ride, turned into a 25 mile / 2.5 hours orienteering excercise.
Absolutel exhausted this morning. Not so much the distance, but constant concentration needed when your trying to find your way.
Here's the route
Trouble is I still don't know the best way to get to Ruislip, so I'll probably have to do it again on Monday
lazyfatgit
Guest
- Location
- Lawrence, NSW
Cycled out to Livingston to meet a freind for Coffee. Steady tail wind meant i averaged 17mph. The forecast heavy rain and light wind didn't happen, so i battled back into a (mostly) headwind in the dry. Pushed hard as i neared home and averaged 16mph for the whole trip, which is the best I've done over that distance (46 mile).
Really starting to feel fitter.
Really starting to feel fitter.
gaz
Cycle Camera TV
- Location
- South Croydon
Good ride in today, best weather of the week so far..
Had a van driver cut me up on a corner, i let him know his mistakes nicely and he was very kind back. giving me a hoot and a wave as he took me on vauxhal bridge.
I also scalped a moped, the mupet was in the bus lane not going any where fast. so i went past him at a modest 29mph. see you later SUCKER
did my fastest time as well, 49mins to give me an average of 16.2mph. shame i have to travel though london or i could get that much faster.
Had a van driver cut me up on a corner, i let him know his mistakes nicely and he was very kind back. giving me a hoot and a wave as he took me on vauxhal bridge.
I also scalped a moped, the mupet was in the bus lane not going any where fast. so i went past him at a modest 29mph. see you later SUCKER
did my fastest time as well, 49mins to give me an average of 16.2mph. shame i have to travel though london or i could get that much faster.
well, not today, but Tuesday.
I escorted the Babe to work, and, looking at the forecast, realised that if there was going to be a ride this week, it was going to be that day. Which was a bit of a problem, because I had no map, and I was in posession of a stonking hangover, the product of Blanc de Blanc drunk the night before, and, who knows, the cross-Channel ferry binge of Sunday afternoon (so working class, darling). So I decided to do the easy thing, and, instead of turning left out of the door for Harwich (which will be next week) I decided to smarten up my route to Birmingham, having made a bit of a Horlicks of it a few weeks back.
So, down the Essex Road, turning left at the tube station and on to the A1. I trundled through Archway, and picked Aylmer Road rather than the Great North Road, before shooting down and across Henly's Corner, sliding rightwards across a couple of lanes in the most stylish way I knew how, taking the Great North Way past the beginning of the M1, before getting on to the A41 at Apex Corner. All was good. The sun was out, the road was surprisingly empty, and, having crossed, re-crossed and crossed the motorway again, I did the clever thing and picked the old A41, now called the A4251, and made my way to Kings Langley.
On then, through Bovingdon, Bourne and Berkhamsted, all two storey suburbs with the occasional nice front garden and the more than occasional second hand car dealer. Do second hand car dealers still wear sheepskin coats? The late Cedric Price (now there was a man who knew what a hangover was) wore one because his father sold cars - a nod to the past from the Great Modernist. I saw less of the canal than I'd hoped - infill and taller trees cutting out what used to be the view - but there was quite a bit of the railway main line with trains bound for Brum shooting through so quickly I couldn't make out the faces in the windows. It had taken me an hour and forty minutes to get to Berko, and I did some arithmetic and, in consultation with the hangover, decided that Warwick would be about it for the day...
Tring! Every morning a retired brick factor plays nine holes of golf on a course on the Costa Brava, and, on the last green, raises his eyes to heaven and thanks the good burghers of Tring and the paviors with which they have covered their high street. My favourite Bucks Herald headline, dating from some Thatcher-induced cold war panic, was 'Tring prepares for Nuclear War'. With who? Hemel Hempstead? Well, if brick paviors decided wars, Tring would be a superpower, and the citizens of Hemel would be touching their forelocks like the Bulgarians of old. No moisture on the ground today, though, no sliding up and down those artfully patterned speedbumps like Rossi on acid, oh, no, just steady, circumspect progress through the town, and up to the turn for Aston Clinton, which I picked despite some typically misleading DfT signposting.
Down what may or may not have been the hill that gave the Aston Martin its name, and on to the unmodernised portion of the A41, packed with Cavaliers heading for John Hampden's town.
I eschewed (now there's a word we could do without) the Aylesbury ring road, and went across the arm of the Grand Union in to the town centre. Much changed, with many brick paviors. The Tringites had better watch their step. My favourite building survives, still as odd as ever, although Costa Coffee have made the most of it
but Baker's bicycle shop is no more. Down the Buckingham Road, stopping to pay my respects to the former maternity hospital thirty years and four days after little Miss Z made her entrance in to the world,
before taking Gatehouse Road, still as ugly as ever, out of town.
And then a right turn to Berrylands, and relax...on to quiet lanes for more than twenty miles, all pretty flat, some widened for the marshalling of the second front, or perhaps for the brickworks that employed the Italian prisoners, those that decided to stay, after the second front had been and been won. I dropped by the village shop in Quainton. The proprietor, now very old, and surely the last, uses bar codes rather than a pencil and a brown paper bag, but not a lot else had changed. I drank my dandelion and burdock on the village green, in front of the mill, thinking that Quainton was not badly named.
then remounted and headed west through Edgcott, Marsh Gibbon, Stratton Audley and across the Buckingham road to Stoke Lyme. It was only later, looking at the map, that I realised how close Bicester was to swallowing Launton, and having Marsh Gibbon for afters; on Tuesday I was blissfully unaware.
On to the old A41, my friend the B4100. Easy riding up a series of dips and down scarps, through Aynho, over the Cherwell and the Oxford Canal, but also over the horror that is the M40, begetter of a million pointless commutes
before sliding through Banbury and up the hill to Warmington, then to fall of Edge Hill, diminished by the road, but erased by the motorway that carves through the Cotswolds like a knife through butter.
By this time my mouth was getting dry and my head sweaty. Good living has a price. A can of 7up picked up at a mobile cafe in a layby about ten miles short of Warwick did me the world of good, but when I was overtaken by a superlong artic carrying a railway carriage (not good if you instinctively move right after the first fifty feet of truck has gone by) I knew I was running out of puff. And so, getting in to Warwick at exactly six hours after I started I caught the 14.24 back to Marylebone for the bargain price of £18.40 and thought it more of a bargain still on arriving and seeing a sea of dismay in the railway station brought on by a derailment at Banbury - presumably only a little after my train had passed through.
So....London to Warwick is done. Warwick to Birmingham probably next week. I've got Norwich, York and points north, and Plymouth in my back pocket It's like Sustrans without the stupidity.
I escorted the Babe to work, and, looking at the forecast, realised that if there was going to be a ride this week, it was going to be that day. Which was a bit of a problem, because I had no map, and I was in posession of a stonking hangover, the product of Blanc de Blanc drunk the night before, and, who knows, the cross-Channel ferry binge of Sunday afternoon (so working class, darling). So I decided to do the easy thing, and, instead of turning left out of the door for Harwich (which will be next week) I decided to smarten up my route to Birmingham, having made a bit of a Horlicks of it a few weeks back.
So, down the Essex Road, turning left at the tube station and on to the A1. I trundled through Archway, and picked Aylmer Road rather than the Great North Road, before shooting down and across Henly's Corner, sliding rightwards across a couple of lanes in the most stylish way I knew how, taking the Great North Way past the beginning of the M1, before getting on to the A41 at Apex Corner. All was good. The sun was out, the road was surprisingly empty, and, having crossed, re-crossed and crossed the motorway again, I did the clever thing and picked the old A41, now called the A4251, and made my way to Kings Langley.
On then, through Bovingdon, Bourne and Berkhamsted, all two storey suburbs with the occasional nice front garden and the more than occasional second hand car dealer. Do second hand car dealers still wear sheepskin coats? The late Cedric Price (now there was a man who knew what a hangover was) wore one because his father sold cars - a nod to the past from the Great Modernist. I saw less of the canal than I'd hoped - infill and taller trees cutting out what used to be the view - but there was quite a bit of the railway main line with trains bound for Brum shooting through so quickly I couldn't make out the faces in the windows. It had taken me an hour and forty minutes to get to Berko, and I did some arithmetic and, in consultation with the hangover, decided that Warwick would be about it for the day...
Tring! Every morning a retired brick factor plays nine holes of golf on a course on the Costa Brava, and, on the last green, raises his eyes to heaven and thanks the good burghers of Tring and the paviors with which they have covered their high street. My favourite Bucks Herald headline, dating from some Thatcher-induced cold war panic, was 'Tring prepares for Nuclear War'. With who? Hemel Hempstead? Well, if brick paviors decided wars, Tring would be a superpower, and the citizens of Hemel would be touching their forelocks like the Bulgarians of old. No moisture on the ground today, though, no sliding up and down those artfully patterned speedbumps like Rossi on acid, oh, no, just steady, circumspect progress through the town, and up to the turn for Aston Clinton, which I picked despite some typically misleading DfT signposting.
Down what may or may not have been the hill that gave the Aston Martin its name, and on to the unmodernised portion of the A41, packed with Cavaliers heading for John Hampden's town.
I eschewed (now there's a word we could do without) the Aylesbury ring road, and went across the arm of the Grand Union in to the town centre. Much changed, with many brick paviors. The Tringites had better watch their step. My favourite building survives, still as odd as ever, although Costa Coffee have made the most of it
but Baker's bicycle shop is no more. Down the Buckingham Road, stopping to pay my respects to the former maternity hospital thirty years and four days after little Miss Z made her entrance in to the world,
before taking Gatehouse Road, still as ugly as ever, out of town.
And then a right turn to Berrylands, and relax...on to quiet lanes for more than twenty miles, all pretty flat, some widened for the marshalling of the second front, or perhaps for the brickworks that employed the Italian prisoners, those that decided to stay, after the second front had been and been won. I dropped by the village shop in Quainton. The proprietor, now very old, and surely the last, uses bar codes rather than a pencil and a brown paper bag, but not a lot else had changed. I drank my dandelion and burdock on the village green, in front of the mill, thinking that Quainton was not badly named.
then remounted and headed west through Edgcott, Marsh Gibbon, Stratton Audley and across the Buckingham road to Stoke Lyme. It was only later, looking at the map, that I realised how close Bicester was to swallowing Launton, and having Marsh Gibbon for afters; on Tuesday I was blissfully unaware.
On to the old A41, my friend the B4100. Easy riding up a series of dips and down scarps, through Aynho, over the Cherwell and the Oxford Canal, but also over the horror that is the M40, begetter of a million pointless commutes
before sliding through Banbury and up the hill to Warmington, then to fall of Edge Hill, diminished by the road, but erased by the motorway that carves through the Cotswolds like a knife through butter.
By this time my mouth was getting dry and my head sweaty. Good living has a price. A can of 7up picked up at a mobile cafe in a layby about ten miles short of Warwick did me the world of good, but when I was overtaken by a superlong artic carrying a railway carriage (not good if you instinctively move right after the first fifty feet of truck has gone by) I knew I was running out of puff. And so, getting in to Warwick at exactly six hours after I started I caught the 14.24 back to Marylebone for the bargain price of £18.40 and thought it more of a bargain still on arriving and seeing a sea of dismay in the railway station brought on by a derailment at Banbury - presumably only a little after my train had passed through.
So....London to Warwick is done. Warwick to Birmingham probably next week. I've got Norwich, York and points north, and Plymouth in my back pocket It's like Sustrans without the stupidity.
willhub
Guru
To the bike shop, then to pick a HRM up, another trip tomorrow for new cleats and spacers. Was very windy, HRM kept me paced abit though 
.
Nice 37 miles @ 18.7mph average, would have bin over 19 if there was no crappy traffic lights.
.Nice 37 miles @ 18.7mph average, would have bin over 19 if there was no crappy traffic lights.
ACS
Legendary Member
- Location
- Just below the snow line
Brisk 18 miles, lumpy bits to start with, flat run home with a 21mph tail wind.....wayhey !
HLaB
Marie Attoinette Fan
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I like this BST Malarky. I didn't leave work very early but still managed a hilly 54 mile (987m, 3237ft of climbing) before it go dark. The first half was hard, with 30mph head winds but the return was great
- Status
