3rd Birthday Ride

Apologies to Phil, Steve and Geoff who are missing from the picture

(click once to enlarge)

I'd almost thought of not bothering with a blog entry given that most of the regular readers were actually on today's ride, but I just couldn't let such a momentous occasion pass without a mention.

The last few drops of rain had already stopped by the time we started to assemble. Riders were popping up from every direction. We reached double figures and still they kept on coming until we finally got to 18.

There was an early photo call when a Chinese gentleman, a keen club rider himself back in China, asked for a photograph. We duly obliged and invited him to stand with us whilst his wife (I assume) took the picture.

In good spirits we left in two groups with the aim of arriving at The Angel Tea Rooms, Sherston at 11.30am for hot drinks and birthday cake.

Dave keeps a watchful eye on our cake

I'll fast forward to the events at The Angel where the staff had kindly given us the exclusive use of our own room.  On one table was easily the biggest Victoria Sponge I've ever seen. Once cut, we all had a generous piece each and judging by the empty plates afterwards, it was very much enjoyed by everyone.

It tasted as good as it looks

We didn't sing Happy Birthday, but Howard did entertain us with a short speech. Howard won't thank me for saying so, but I think people should know that whilst the cake was paid for from club funds, the money for our teas and coffees came from his own pocket. A huge thank you to Howard for his generosity. 

Standing room only

During proceedings our tally was boosted by Simon's arrival and we steered into uncharted territory when Mike and Maureen rolled up bringing our total to 21. (Some have mentioned there being 22, so I might have miscounted)

Here's to another great year of cycling as the club continues to grow.

https://connect.garmin.com/course/8907604#

Halliday at the Hell

I last made the trip to Kent for Catford CC's re-branded reliability ride 7 years and over ten kilos ago but the event remains the same - an early season leg tester that will find you out if you weren't hard enough to go riding with Hard Howard on Saturdays over the winter, or committed enough to spend a few hours a week in the garage on the turbo.

The event now starts in Biggin Hill and runs all the way down to the signature hill in the Ashdown Forest. There are apparently five hills of note but the ones you will remember are Kidds, aka The Wall, Ide Hill which features a feed station and malt loaf therapy at its summit and the sting in the tail - Star Hill, a handful of miles from the finish. 

The day started very cold at -2 and the start was delayed to let some of the ice melt. The course is heavily and very nicely marshaled however, so those coming off only really had themselves to blame for not heeding the advice. I got warm quite quickly - the first hill being a short sharp b*gger not unlike blacksmiths in Ozelworth (although not so steep at a mere 25%) and from then I got in to a nice tappy rhythm.

Kidds Hill

Kidds Hill comes at roughly halfway just after the first feed and is pretty much straight up. I sat down and chugged it out but manged to summit without too much drama. By the time I'd gone over some more short sharp hills and some blistering descents however, I'd started to get a bit tight and the cramp hit just before Ides. On the hill itself I had to stop and do some serious stretching - albeit with a wonderful brooding view. When I got to the top, the second feed station and the timing mat, I was very glad of the coffee and church hall where I could give myself a proper stretch out on the church hall stage.

Some more bouncy Kent countryside brought me to the last climb at Star Hill (smile for the camera) and then in to Knockholt at the top whose village hall used to be the start and finish - albeit now some 8 miles from Darwin school. 

A half hour later after some of the worst roads of the ride I was back rolling under the finish inflatable, glad I'd beaten the weather front that brought the wind and the rain in half an hour later. 

It’s a great event and one I will be doing again. At 5700 feet of gain it's only 500 feet short of the Exmoor beast but thirty miles shorter. I'll need the practice though. 

The Fred Whitton approaches in May.

Jamie

Club Ride Saturday 21st February 2015

A pair of Dobbies

                                                                     

 Dobby from Harry Potter . . . . . . . 

and Dobby from the Peep Show

Don't worry, I haven't gone completely insane, it's just that when Howard first mentioned a club run to Dobbies Garden Centre, I instantly had a mental image of these two running the show there.

Actually, Dobbies was founded in Scotland in 1865 by James Dobbie and originally traded as a seed merchant under the name of Dobbie & Co. They later expanded and became a seed catalogue business before eventually opening a number of garden centres. In 2008 the chain was fully acquired by Tesco after a bitter legal battle with rival Wyevale.

Okay, now that we've sorted out the difference between a pair of fictional characters and a garden centre just outside of Cirencester, let's get on with the cycling.

This morning we were very pleased to welcome not one, but two new riders in the form of Zoe and Des. It transpired that Des also rode the recent Chippenham Flapjack (I know, I did promise I wouldn't mention anything to do with Audax for a while) and the back of his head was captured on the blog in the picture taken at Kemble Village Hall. We hope to share many enjoyable miles with them in the future.

Seven of us set off this morning on the advertised course, but not to Dobbies! Howard's careful planning involved cycling the route earlier in the week and to his horror, he'd discovered that it wasn't possible to keep an eye on our bikes from the cafe. Relish therefore became the substitute coffee stop.

Just what is all that nonsense about Dobbies then? Well, I wrote that in anticipation of our trip there and as I'm rather pleased with it, it's staying in.

We were blessed with some perfect cycling weather and along the way we came across Dynamo Mike.

Our peloton snakes its way through South Cerney

Shall we sit inside or out? Sometimes the elements can be very cruel. After a fair bit of dithering we eventually elected to make use of the benches outside. However, a vicious wind soon whipped up from nowhere and sent us scuttling indoors.

Leaving Relish for home

Our return leg took us through Ewen. Some of you might remember the drilling Shell carried out during the early 1970's in Minety looking for oil and gas. If you're ever at Ewen and in need of some refreshment, pop into The Wild Duck Inn and you'll find the drill head on display. When I was last there around 1982 they had some interesting photographs of the drilling too, but they might be long gone now.

The final mileage came in a fraction under 40 miles.

https://connect.garmin.com/course/8874829

Club Ride Saturday 14th February 2015

Over the last few Saturdays the temperature has been rather low for my liking, but today promised sunshine and a spring like warmth of around 6 degrees C. Prior to this, Saturday temperatures were in the twos and threes and along with that was the ever present risk of ice. Reflecting on this, it surprised me that not once did a ride not go out. There were always members willing to battle/risk the cold and make a morning of it. I have to admit that I was not one of them.

It seems that most clubs have their specialist – time trialists, road racers, mountain bikers etc., well, we have our cryophiles!

During the cold spell no routes were set. Destinations were agreed on the day to allowing route adjustments to be made following consideration of how icy specific roads may have been. However, we have found over the years that fewer riders appear when a ride is not pre advertised.  Never-the-less, this week, five riders set off to the Canteen Café in Nailsworth. 

The thing about Nailsworth is that whatever way you go after cake, it is always up hill. We chose the fairly easy climb up to Minchinhampton.

The bunch disappear upwards, and

In time honoured fashion, regroup at the top.

The ride became something of a little climb fest as we headed to Cherington via the golf course. From there we wound our way through the lanes to Minety, Somerford Common and back to Malmesbury taking in all the ‘hills’ we could find. Of course, we couldn’t go that way without visiting and crossing our very own alpe d’huez.  Karine was suitably impressed!

Riders - Howard, Karine, Geoff, Andy, and Tim H. Miles covered 42.

https://www.strava.com/activities/254775392

Howard

Malmesbury Mash 212km Audax Ride from Cardiff Gate

The Toby Carvery, Cardiff Gate

I’m not sure why, but the thought of riding from Cardiff to Malmesbury and then back again really appealed to me. Living in Malmesbury, doing it the other way round makes a lot more sense, but then sense and cycling don’t always go together.

I won’t bore you with the preliminaries, but suffice to say, Saturday's 7.00am start from Cardiff Gate on the eastern side of the city involved setting an alarm clock for what on any other day I’d think of as the middle of the night, followed by an hour’s drive on a near deserted M4.

A car park outside of a closed Toby Carvery might seem an unlikely setting for the start of an adventure, but this is Audax and so nothing seemed out of place.

Coinciding with our departure were the first few spots of rain which were of the cold, icy variety. It wasn’t exactly a downpour, but it was enough to warrant some riders pulling over to put on their rain jackets.

Any ride from a city, particularly when it has such a close neighbour, is bound to incur some urban cycling, but I still found the unfamiliar surroundings absorbing.

The transporter bridge
(Click once to enlarge the pictures)

A personal highlight was seeing for the first time Newport’s Grade 1 listed transporter bridge over the River Usk. Built in 1906, this impressive piece of engineering is still in use today.

Time to refuel at Chepstow

The Murco garage on the A48 outside of Chepstow was our first control. As I joined the queue of riders offering up their minimal purchases in exchange for an all-important receipt, panic swept through the ranks when someone turned from the counter and said that they’d just run out of paper.(No doubt an old Audax joke). I was relieved to see the member of staff priming a new till roll.

There’s something special about cycling over the Severn Bridge that driving fails to capture; just how high up you are for one thing. Once on the other side, we climbed up to Alveston and by the time we’d reached the top, the sun had broken through making it a very pleasant morning.

Getting held at a set of traffic lights on the A38, a peloton of around 9 or 10 of us took shape and we stayed together until we eventually dissolved near Wickwar. Shared miles always pass by so much quicker.

The ascent to the Somerset Monument after crossing Inglestone Common is always a bit of a challenge, but it set up a fast running section through Didmarton and Sherston into Malmesbury for lunch. I headed straight to a place I know where beans on toast is a house speciality - my own kitchen.

Before leaving the town on the B4014 to Tetbury, I stopped at the Co-op at the bottom of Tetbury Hill to obtain a receipt. Not having my lock, I had to endure an agonising wait at the kiosk whilst the customer in front of me took advantage of every conceivable service available by buying his lottery ticket, scratch card, cigarettes, putting some money on his electricity key, gas key and asking for cashback.

The Tudor Arms at Shepherd's Patch

With my bike having narrowly avoided becoming a crime statistic, from Tetbury I took the A4135 down into Dursley and out through Slimbridge to the control at The Tudor Arms. This was once a beer and cider house for the Irish Navigators who dug out the Gloucester to Sharpness Canal by hand. The food coming out of the kitchen looked very appetising and I made a mental note to return on another day.

Some of the lanes from Slimbridge down to Berkeley and on towards Elberton might have been clogged with mud in places, but it only served to add to the rural charm.

Travelling in the right direction, but on the wrong side

Returning to the Severn Bridge, I managed to miss a turn and ended up going back on the wrong side. With no harm done, it was then just a case of following the A48 back to Newport and out the other side to Cardiff Gate. It sounds easy, but my city cycling skills aren’t what they could be and negotiating fast moving roundabouts tested them to the limit.

After a swift coke in The Toby Carvery, I jumped into my car and drove back to Malmesbury.

My thanks go to the organiser Ritchie. Also, the two lads whom I first met when they were stopped at Berkeley and Bairdy for kindly guiding me over the last mile or so, by which time the Garmin had surrendered and in the half-light my cue card had become a blur.

Course details can be found here  

Chippenham Flapjack 102km Audax Ride

Riders flood out of the Bath Road car park, Chippenham

(click once to enlarge the pictures)

King Alfred the Great was rather fond of Chippenham. He used to stay there in his hunting lodge. (Tenuous link alert!) He didn’t burn the cakes at Chippenham though and neither do the merry band of bakers at the Chippenham & District Wheelers who host this annual 102km Audax ride. The aptly named Flapjack is a sort of festival of food on two wheels.

Riding up Chippenham’s High Street there are still some fine old buildings to admire. Back in the days of the stage coach, travellers often mistakenly thought that they’d arrived in Bath when they reached Chippenham and as a result, the town became known as Little Bath.

As we headed for the open countryside, with not so much as a hint of a breeze, the biting cold was really hurting my fingers. Judging by the amount of finger-flexing to encourage better circulation that was going on around me, I wasn’t the only one suffering.

With the sun doing its best to burn off the early morning fog, the climb up to Bremhill certainly got the blood pumping. Quite a few of the sheltered spots around Spirthill were found to be harbouring patches of ice, and even though things were definitely warming up, isolated pockets of the slippery stuff stayed with us into the early afternoon.

Please keep off of the daffodils!

Being the first of the day, the control at Brinkworth was a busy one with neat lines of bikes up against every available wall and fence. This also extended to the hedgerow, but care had to be taken not to crush the fledgling daffodils. A couple of ‘Keep off the Daffodils Please’ signs had been placed on the ground and Eric Fletcher the organiser, was also on hand to ensure they weren’t being trampled. (No doubt preserving the flowers is something the Village Hall Committee insists upon).

With a couple of loose crowns I didn’t dare risk a slice of the legendary flapjack, but I was more than pleased with the delicious homemade fruit cake.

With lunch beckoning at the Kemble Village Hall, I set off for Siddington. The loner in me appreciated the open road and once I’d completed the gradual incline across the Somerford Common and up to Minety, it was all pretty flat around the outer edges of the Cotswold Water Park. The ‘Quiet Road’ might have been quiet, but covered in mud it had ceased to be a road.

A packed village hall at Kemble

At Kemble, home of the Red Arrows until 1983 (of course that’s RAF Kemble and not the village hall), the well-oiled machine that is ‘Dream Team 2’ was working as efficiently as ever keeping waiting times for the servings of beans on toast down to an absolute minimum. A cup of tea polished off the feast. There was plenty of cake on offer too, but I decided to save a small space for the afternoon tea at Sherston Village Hall.

Beans means it's the Flapjack

The ride up the tree lined lane to Tarlton, through Rodmarton, around to Cherington and onto Chavenage was cycling at its best. Had it been a few degrees warmer you could have been forgiven for thinking it was a summer’s day.

At Sherston, the light, fluffy sponge cake was the perfect accompaniment to my cup of tea.

The final leg to the Scout Hut in Derriads Lane, Chippenham was made via Grittleton, Castle Combe and Biddestone.  Poor form I know, but I didn’t have any room left for the soup and rolls at the end. Next year I’m going to pace myself a bit better to make sure I can squeeze in all four courses.

Windrush Winter Warm Down 157km Audax

Riders getting ready to leave Ashton Keynes 
(click once to enlarge the pictures)

I’m a bit of a sucker when it comes to sales talk. On Sunday 1^st February 2015, Cirencester Corinium CC staged two Audax rides, both starting from the sports pavilion at Ashton Keynes. The shorter of the two; the Windrush Winter Warm- Up over 108km was billed as a ‘beautiful and not difficult ride’, whereas the Windrush Winter Warm-Down, around a 157km course, was described as ‘slightly harder than the Warm-Up.’

I can manage ‘slightly harder’ and that’s how I came to take my place among the clutch of hardy souls who had gathered for the 8.00am start. The much depleted field was undoubtedly due to the possibility of ice with temperatures hovering around freezing point and the predicted strong winds.

Heading north into a very strong headwind I decided to try and conserve my energy for later use. There was the occasional frozen puddle, but the roads were dry and any potential hazard was easy to spot.  

After Bibury things started to get a bit lumpy, as the route followed the River Coln through the Coln Valley to its source near Brockhampton. Of some concern was that regardless of the ground I made, according to the fingerposts, I was somehow never more than 8 miles from Cirencester.

The hills and wind were definitely thwarting my progress and whilst I was enjoying the glorious Cotswold countryside, made all the more spectacular by the brilliant winter sunshine, the prospect of my missing the cut-off time at the first control, suddenly occurred to me.

The Orchard Tea Room at Hailes Abbey

It was with some relief that I came across the first signpost for Winchcombe. Sweeping down the steep descent into the picturesque town I arrived at Hailes Abbey with a bit of time in-hand, but not too much. Inside the control at the Orchard Tea Room were a handful of other riders including an exiled Chippenham Wheeler now living in Dorset. We all chatted amiably until those already fed drifted out leaving me and Drew Buck, a seasoned Audaxer from The Mendips, to enjoy our beans on toast.

Looking west from the top of the hill

Audax tends to be a world of extremes and challenges are often understated. The pre-ride information mentioned a ‘hard climb’ after the control, which outside of Audax normally means that it's the sort of climb best tackled with the aid of a Sherpa. The ascent, once conquered, afforded fine views across to the distant Malvern Hills.

With the wind now in our favour, it was a quick sprint on to the next control at Sherborne, just 26km away. Our route took us through the chocolate box tourist town of Bourton-on-the-Water and up to the curiously named Clapton-on-the-hill. Has Eric ever performed there, I wondered.

Sherborne Village Hall Social Club

One of the many things I treasure about Audax is that it provides a rare opportunity to sample a slice of a particular village’s life. I can’t think of any other circumstance in which I’d find myself drinking tea inside the delightful Sherborne Village Hall Social Club even though the notice swinging outside in the wind said ‘Visitors Welcome.’ The interior was from a bygone age, the only concession being a wide screen television. We shared this control with the ‘Warm-Uppers’ who were riding anti-clockwise.

The burst banks of the River Windrush

After Sherborne, still with the wind behind us, we followed the River Windrush with its willow tree lined banks to Burford and beyond. Gradually the roads levelled out and by the time we’d reached Witney and the next control at Stanton Harcourt, there wasn’t a hill in sight.

One rider wasn't taking any chances at Stanton Harcourt

Two others were just leaving when I arrived at Stanton Harcourt’s vast village hall. This had earlier been the first control for those on the ‘Warm-Up.’ Helpers were folding up the last of the trestle tables and sweeping the floor. With three DNF’s already reported, two with mechanical problems, our small troupe had whittled down to fifteen, of which I was now the penultimate rider. I was still made very welcome and after the solitude of riding solo, I enjoyed their company over a bowl of warm rice pudding, a cup of tea and some cake.

The final 45km was a fairly fast run over mostly flat roads. There was a flurry of snow on some high ground just before Fairford which, although not pitching on the ground, did begin to take shape on the back of my glove. 

With darkness having fallen, small pockets of water at the edge of the road began to glisten. Entering Ashton Keynes the inviting lights of the sports pavilion shone like a beacon of hope and guided me safely back. Once inside, the warmth and hospitality from those waiting for their flock to return was truly humbling.

After a cup of tea, some flapjack and far too many slices of lardy cake, I said my farewells and disappeared into the night reflecting on what had been a great ride. The organiser and his team were definitely the friendly faces of Audax UK. My first Winter Windrush, but certainly not my last.

  

Club Ride Saturday 31st January 2015

This Saturday’s ride saw 7 Clarions cycle to Relish Cafe at the Cotswold Water Park. We welcome Alice who is back riding again after a short enforced sabbatical. A really enjoyable ride at a leisurely pace.

Well, that's it folks. I could discuss the history of Military shenanigans in North Wiltshire or the height of Oaksey church spire, but my name is Time H and not Tim W!

I am sure normal service will resume next week!