Malmesbury Mash 208km

This 130 mile Audax officially started near Cardiff and followed a figure of eight route through Chepstow, across the old Severn bridge to Malmesbury in Wiltshire, heading back via the old Severn bridge, Chepstow and Cardiff. As the route passed close to Bristol I decided to start it here and then follow it all the way round back to where I started. (We shall ignore the fact that I slept through my alarm and woke up at 7.10am, meaning I had no chance of getting to Cardiff for the 7.30am start!). I drove to Iron Acton (North Bristol) and was on the bike at 8.30am. I knew I had little chance of completing the route before sunset but luckily this bike has good lights.

The description of the route was “Only one big hill, a good early season trainer”. I don’t totally agree with this! There was a long drag out of Caerphilly and a few short, sharp climbs near Newport and on the way back from Chepstow to Malmesbury. Near Tytherington I was rapidly running out of water and thankfully came across a snack van parked along the A38, which was closing up for the day, but the lady in charge kindly sold me some Coke and water and this really helped! I was getting quite dehydrated by this point. The route, overall, was stunning and I will be using it again. I stopped to watch a spectacular sunset from the high spot between Hawkesbury Upton and Horton in Gloucestershire.

I got an answer phone message from a reporter from the Bristol Evening Post and, on phoning him back, was told that the paper is keen to publish an article about our Tour ASAP. This is great because the more coverage we can get, the better.

So far our sponsorship is up to £750.00 so thank you to everybody who has donated and please keep passing the word around. Powerbar have kindly offered us 30% off all their energy supplements as way of support.

Bristol-Gloucester-Monmouth-Bristol

This morning, I headed along the A38 all the way to Gloucester and, surprisingly, this turned out to be a very nice, quiet road. The fun started after turning off the A40 for Monmouth where the road became fairly undulating with long climbs, but a nice final sweep down to Monmouth. This was followed by a lovely ride through the Wye Valley past Tintern Abbey to pick up the M48 (cycle path) over the old Severn bridge heading into a fairly stiff head wind. The ride back through Avonmouth and then along the Portway was flattish until I passed under the Clifton suspension bridge, and then as my legs began to complain I had to climb up to Clifton. All in all 100 miles wrapped up in just over 6 hours. Bring on Saturday and a 130 miler!

I'd like to thank everybody who has sponsored us so far. Its really appreciated and adds to our motivation!

The Three L's

That's Linlithgow, Livingston and Lanark - and were the three major towns on my route yesterday which took me over the 100 mile mark for the first time in about 8-9 years!

On the Saturday night I'd driven over the Campsies (hills to the North of Glasgow) on my way home and had encountered what can only be described as a blizzard - this had led me to rethink my route for the next day which involved climbing up to above the snow line (not that high round here at the moment!)

The only feasible direction appeared to be East as a result and so I was up until midnight planning myself a new route.

So come the Sunday morning I set off (forgetting my sunglasses this time - see my last post) and readying myself for 7 hours of rain and 23 mph Southerlies (as per the forecast).

The rain failed to materialise but alas they were spot on with the winds which was thoroughly enjoyable while heading North but a bit of a shocker in the other direction!

It was a fairly eventful ride all in all. After about 10 miles I got lost in Easterhouse (not the best part of Glasgow to be seen wearing flourescent Lycra). So after looking both ways I beat a hasty retreat along my route to refind the correct road.

About an hour later I passed a group of cyclists going in the other direction and we exchanged hearty greetings. I then heard what appeared to be barking. I glanced around and sure enough there was what looked like a pitbull rapidly bearing down on my rear wheel and (more importantly) ankles. I put some considerable amount of pressure into the pedals, accelerated to 20mph and, after about 5 seconds, the wee bugger gave up. It was like something out of a cartoon. Very odd.

The route as a whole took me through some really stunning and surprisingly remote countryside considering I was never more than about 20 miles from a motorway and no more than 25 miles from Glasgow or Edinburgh at any point.

Certainly a route I shall be doing again, though hopefully with less wind next time. Having said that the wind did allow me to have some fun on the run in to Glasgow. The last 8 miles or so are downhill into the Clyde valley and with a tail wind as well, I found myself coming off a roundabout exceeding 35 mph and gaining on the car in front. It was a long straight stretch of road and I pulled into his slipstream and sat behind him doing 40mph for a little way (he looked very surprised!)

Further down the road, a motorcyclist pulled out in front of me and accelerated up to 30mph. I saw him glance in his mirrors and do a double take as I proceeded to catch and overtake him. Fantastic fun.

Looking forward to next weekend and whatever the weather shall throw at me.

Flapjack 100

After a week of training on my indoor trainer due to inclement weather, I rode this 102km/64 mile event yesterday. This event is one of the many "Audax" events organised by various cycling clubs nationwide, and infact worldwide. They vary from 50km to over 1000km in length and they are good rides for building endurance. They always seem to be hilly and are well organised, using mainly minor roads. The idea is to ride from checkpoint to checkpoint within a designated time.

This particular event started in Chippenham and went out past RAF Lynham, taking in some of Gloucestershire's beautiful villages, returning past the famous Westonbirt arboretum and Castle Coombe. This ride is a bit shorter than what I am used to at the moment but was convenient as so local.

Before I started this ride, I didn't really understand why it was called the Flapjack 100. However, all became clear as copious quantities of flapjack was available at each checkpoint, and very nice it was too! Have to admit I found the route fairly easy and a good sign that my fitness is coming on leaps and bounds. Even the hills felt good, including a couple of 1 in 6s. I have a 208km/130 mile event entered for next weekend.

Matt did a solid 100 miler yesterday, and being up in Scotland, I can imagine it was fairly hilly! I hear that he even overtook a motorbike at some point, so God knows what speed he was doing!!!The fact that we are both capable of riding this sort of distance with 5 months to go till our Tour ride is very encouraging. The key now is to increase the frequency of these rides, because we will be riding day-in, day-out in France.

By now you must be thinking...

So far we have placed 3 posts on here, all of which make us sound like we are cycling disaster stories! But that's half the fun of cycling...as well as squeezing into figure hugging lycra and hobbling around in cycling shoes, there is a certain amount of unpredictability. Pretty much anything can happen! Mechanical probs, mad car drivers, getting lost, potholes... we are hoping that the roads will be nice and smooth when we get to France. Places where the Tour passes through really make an effort to do the roads up before it passes through so the roads are generally a joy to peddle on. Wish the same could be said for British roads...!

New Roads!

Well I went back to see my parents this weekend and to pick up a wheel so that I could start training again. While I was there I found an old route sheet for a local 75 mile cycling route, organised by a club about 10 years ago. In fact I think I rode it back in 1995.

Lovely route and all. Got to about 25 miles into it and followed the directions to the T. Unfortunately after a little while I realised that the directions were making no sense. So phoned Dad, who looked at an up-to-date map. Some fool had gone and built the A3 (T) road since this route had been written and I was miles out. By the time I got back onto the route at 35 miles, I had already done an extra 20 odd miles so decided to give up and cycle home before darkness set in.

To add to the fun, my cycle computer, heart rate monitor and rear light decided to stop working!

Apart from that, an excellent undulating ride and I did somewhere in the region of 90 miles so turned out to be good training.

Matt's Front Tyre has had enough

Well after some late night Burn's night celebrations I set out somewhat bleary eyed on Saturday morning on what was a pleasantly mild day. I made it just over an hour before riding through some standing water into a wheel-sized hole at about 20mph.

This caused an instant puncture and threw one of my bottles across the road. I ground to a rapid halt and set out to replace my inner tube. (Now, whenever I go out for a ride, I always forgot one thing - money, pump, drink, food, etc - and this time it was inner tubes!) So I got out my puncture repair kit to find that the patches were the cunning variety that fail to actually stick to anything. What to do then?

Just then a chap came past on a bike shouting "You alright there?" Before I could respond he'd naffed off up the road - thanks for that then! So I decided I would ring around a few folk to see if anyone could rescue. This honour is usually reserved for my Dad, but as he was about 350 miles away this wasn't very practical!

So James got a call - no answer. "Rusty had stayed at my flat the previous night and was still comatose in the living room when I left - I'll try him", I thought. But both he and Ryan had already left.

Next option - Mark - no answer. Kirsten - phone turned off. OK - who would actually be up at 10:30am on a Saturday morning? Anna. And sure enough she was and kindly said she would come and get me if I could direct her.

"Somewhere on the back roads between Eaglesham and Strathaven" wasn't too helpful though, especially as she had no idea where either of those places are - this is a girl who things Abu Dhabi is in Wales, so I was in for a long walk home. At that moment a cyclist in a red top, who was on his way home to East Kilbride passed and gave me a tube though, so I was saved. (If you happen to read this - please get in contact - I owe you a tube!)

I quickly got the tube in, tyre on and pumped up and then on inspecting the tyre found a rather large hole caused by the, erm, hole. So back home it was.

And I felt awful so it was an afternoon of lounging on the sofa for me instead of getting a new tyre which also put paid to Sunday's ride too. I'm off to the gym now to make up for it though.