Your ride today.... (part 1)

[flatflr]

Club ride today, 51 miles from Witney, through Charlbury, coffee and cake stop near Hook Norton, back via Shipton-under-Wychwood and Burford. Legs were feeling like lead and I was lagging behind the main group until the stop where a caramel covered flapjack hit the spot and BOOM 2nd part of the ride was much much better

 

[HLaB]

I did a relaxed charity ride with some mates today, a nice change of scene and the weather behaved itself too.
There's lots of good pics but nobody has uploaded them yet, I hopefully update if I remember.

http://www.strava.com/activities/151084845

 

[gavgav]

First ride for a long time today with Stokes Cycling club as I have been very unwell with bad depression. The club ran two routes today, with the medium route splittting off after a coffee and cake break at Warmley Station. Met a nice chap down there who is going to open a cycle hire business that will do picnc hampers and repairs for those wanting to cycle along the Brisol to Bath railway path. I decided not to stretch myself too far and came back from Warmley with the small novice group. We still did a respectable 19 miles or so (the connection with the Giant computer was lost for a time on the route).

Feel good having done it, but will probably now fall asleep for a few hours. There's a possible appointmment with a CPN for stronger anti depressants and I have some courses to attend on stress and mood management. Have probably lost my job though as have been off work for 2 months now and I'm still in my probationary period.

Hugs
Archeress x

Glad to hear you are back out on the bike.

 

[Mark Grant]

I rode the Ditchling Devil audax today. 205 Km with over 7600 feet of climbing.
The start

The top of Ditchling

Devils Dyke

Completed the ride in just under 11 hours including stops, 9 hours pedaling
144 miles including the ride to and from. My longest ride so far..

 

[cosmicbike]

11 miles with my wife and kids today. Steady pace so took just under 2 hours..
Saw some ducklings, had a picnic, Sat in the sunshine. Perfect mood lifter for me, just what I needed before going back to hospital tomorrow.

 

[andrewpreston]

Did a Sky Ride aimed at beginners in an attempt to get " 'Er indoors " cycling. She seems to have enjoyed it so we're booked for a more advanced ride next week. Looking forward to it!

 

[Kevoffthetee]

Not a ride today as I was out yesterday but plenty of bikers out. I took my daughter to Hamsterly Forest for the Grufallo birthday trail and the place is a MTB'ers paradise. Lots of graded tracks and the lure of a black trail made me want to get my mtb out.

All mtbs and there must have been hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gear bombing around

 

[gbb]

2 to 3 hours pleasure ride with the wife on our hybrids this afternoon, 15, maybe 20 leasurely miles.
Highlights include...
Marholm church, a nice village church just off the road, down a hardcore track for 100 yards....through a grazing field, and into the church grounds. We had a look around and while, i looked over to the field we're going back into shortly to see maybe 20 bullocks (young bulls ?) running across the field, towards the cattle gridded entrance area. Young, strong, lively looking, all of them
'How fast can you ride ?' i taunted the wife
'expletive deleted...'
'You scared ? '
'Sod off'

We watched them amble back where they came from, we started to make towards the gate and cattle grid...to be confronted by three of them we hadnt seen
I lead the way and had to ride gingerly 5 feet away from the first one, who never took his eyes off me , the wife followed close behind Can't say i was happy and with hindsight, i think we were stupid to pass them so close...but hey ho, done now.
Lots of (well about 6) goldfinch, one glorious red kite over the church, calling put a meowing sound, dangling some grass or scrub from his or her talons, nesting maybe...one yellowhammer i think, swan with cygnets etc etc.
Country park, quiet B roads, farm tracks, some woodland tracks and cycle trails alongside the river in lovely sunshine.
Ever notice how nice it is to ride with your partner ? ..you talk and chatter. If you were at home, you busy yourself with something and nothing, outside, you chatter...well we do anyway.
Lovely ride.

 

[Cuchilo]

Having decided far to late to do the Ditchling Devil and finding it sold out I decided to go to the seaside anyway .
I was up at around 530 am and decided to download a course to my garmin for the ride . I found a road course called " to Brighton" and tried to dl it . First I had to update my garmin connect and then sync my garmin . So by 730 am I had the course on my garmin
After 10 miles the course went off road big time so I bailed out and just headed towards the coast . I should have done that at 530 !
I got to the beach by about 1pm and had about 40 mins rest before heading back to London .

Having bailed out of my garmin route and my phone not getting a signal to use mapping I wasn't sure I was heading the right way , I knew I was heading to London on cycle route 20 but had no idea what part of London !
luckily I bumped into another cyclist heading to the same part of London and his phone was working so we teamed up and got lost
All in all a great day and a new cycling buddy found as a bonus .
118 mile round trip and a promise to myself to find a proper map for cycle route 20 from London to Brighton as most of the parts we used where lovely country roads .

 

[vernon]

Having not been out and about on my bike recently, I found the perfect excuse - a visit to Bedale to see Bittern, an A4 pacific before it departs from the Wensleydale Railway. Inadvertantly I found myself riding on part of le Tour route - out along the A61 through Ripon and on to West Tanfield thence Bedale and onto Leeming Bar where Bittern was waiting to pull the last train of the day. Not all of my route coincided with le Tour but there's some nice scenery to be had and it was my luck to land with climbing some of the descents. Way marking of the route is now evident - yellow bikes are popping up all over the place. A grand day out at 52 miles - I didn't fancy the return leg into a fairly strong againsterly so I caught a train from Northallerton back to Leeds.

Way marker 1

Way marker 2

West Tanfield

D8110 Class 20

A4 class. Bittern

Recently restored Scruton station.

 

[BigonaBianchi]

I rode the Brighton naked bike ride today (link to blog as has nudity and may not be work/child safe)
http://summeronabianchi.blogspot.co.uk/

 

[PeteXXX]

I actually finished work just before midnight yesterday so was able to have a relatively leisurely start this morning at 08:30. I did still have the headset to reassemble before starting off though! Nothing like being prepared for a ride, eh!?
A mate and I planned to ride up the Brampton Valley Way to Mkt. Harborough and on to Foxton Locks. No great challenge for hill climbing, but we knew it was going to be it a bit wet and muddy due to the recent rains.
After a cuppa at his place, we dropped in to a friend of his n the way to our ride to check out a few old bikes he might be selling. Unfortunately, he was out, but such is life. I'll check them out later this week hopefully.

A few shots of the old railway tunnel entrances on the route. As we knew we were going that way, we took some decent lights with us as the only illumination there is the proverbial light at the other end..

Once we got to Mkt Harborough, we swapped old railway lines for old canal banks and headed for Foxton Locks (a flight of 10 locks on the Leicester line of the Grand Union Canal) as we thought, it was really busy on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon.

Nevertheless, I found time and space for a cooling Magnum. We stopped there for a while, on 30 miles, and then headed homewards via the same route.

On the way back, we remembered the tree we had to clamber through in February as it had just been blown over...

It's a bit easier now!!

Further south on the old railway track we saw smoke blowing across the fields and wondered if the steam trains were running from Chapel Brampton.. Nope!

A haystack was on fire, for some reason, and the fire brigade manage to find a way across the fields to stop it spreading..

No further drama on the ride, and back home after a fairly easy 57 miles, apart from being on Muddy Mary 2.75 tyres!


http://www.strava.com/activities/151018323

 

[Gravity Aided]

A mere 7 miles to my local supermarket (Schnucks) which has direct access from the MUP, (marked, but the sign is bent over) after the two inches of rain last night, parts of the trail were flooded, but I rode through, and got fig bars and about 25 pounds of groceries as well, and returned in the same way, except that I did not go through construction sites on my way back, as I had yogurt and frankfurters and lots of other items that may have been damaged by the muddy track alongside the construction zone made for people who live along the road to use for ingress and egress while the entire crummy road is being torn down to the dirt and replaced with a nicer one, which also has a paralleling MUP that may be done before the road is. This will give me a more direct route to the MUP and a pretty view on the climb up the ridge. A good idea, as the road, either before or after improvements, will be dangerous for bicycles due to the large amount of high speed car, bus (especially-there is a main school bus barn near us) and gigantic truck traffic.

 

[ScotiaLass]

A quick but very pleasant 15 miles this morning. I was on my own, so as soon as the boy was off to school I headed off (8.20am) to cycle down to Helix Park and the Kelpies.

It was lovely and quiet at that time of day and lots of wildlife to be seen.
Herons, swans (blocking the cycle path by laying right across it!) and a family of ducklings.
Of course it would be the day I didn't have my camera with me! I took a few pics on the phone but they are rubbish - that'll teach me!

A heron, looking out for his breakfast!

Duck and ducklings on the turning pool at the Kelpies

Kelpie!

Me...having a rest and a drink before hitting the woods!
I blasted around the woods which were empty, not even a dog walker, and it was so nice to listen to the crunch of gravel and twigs, the whirr of the chain turning and the birds singing.

I made it back up the cemetery hill in one go (usual these days) but the bottom half was tackled in a higher gear than normal!
I was ploughing along the prolonged incline back into the village when I was passed by a guy on a lovely road bike.
He cheerily shouted hello (how the hell did he have the breath to talk!) as he zoomed by me. He looked to be in his late 60's.
Oh the shame!
On the up side, all the drivers were very considerate this morning

 

[kipster]

Yesterday's ride as I was too tired to post yesterday. I did the Help for Heroes Dawn Raid sportive, it started at 2am Sunday morning at Tidworth, and took a route passed the pub dwellers in Andover at 2:30am and on through Overton, Basingstoke and to the first feed stop in Odiham where dawn was beginning to break and the birdsong was fantastic.

The next 40 ish miles were very tough as I was on my own, it went through Aldershot, between Woking and Guildford, on towards Leatherhead before going the back way up box hill, they couldn't get a licence from the National Trust to do the zig zag bit. The second feed station seemed to always be out of reach, but I eventually got there. As I prefer to cycle with others I waiting until some others were leaving and stuck with them for the final bit through Croydon and on to Blackheath for the finish at 9am.

After a bit of a rest and some food about 1200 cyclist from a variety of H4H rides all set off from Blackheath to Horse Guards Parade. Along the way we stopped at the Cenotaph for a remembrance service (photo below) and outside Buckingham Palace.

A total of 107 miles, and a day I will remember for the pain, eleation and the people I met along the way.