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@Vanneau
Well, I haven't really done any long rides in the past couple of months thanks to awkwardly slipping down some stairs onto my ankle - to my great regret I DNSed the Ditchling Devil, as I still wasn't 100%.
To make up for this I've been doing the odd 30 miler on top of the commute as 'rehabilitation' to work up to longer stuff again. I know this isn't strictly a weekend ride, but as I had today off I thought I'd try something a bit different and rented a Brompton from outside Bristol Temple Meads with the goal of taking it up to Bath and back (along the Sustrans 'railway path') before lunchtime. In my usual spirit of total unpreparedness I took a bank card, but that was about it.
I haven't really used a Brompton before but was fairly impressed by the ride in general. It was a bit plastickier (is that even a word?) than I'd expected, but felt like a real bike, although the folding and unfolding process made me wish I'd bought a tub of Swarfega.
It was rush hour, and I was going against the flow so the first few miles were a gentle uphill into the teeth of a howling nodder gale. Despite all the dangerous promuter overtaking, gurning, flapping tabards and the like I held my line and got through Staple Hill tunnel without incident.
Near Mangotsfield I stopped to admire some bit of railway architecture and was passed by a cyclist who must have been 90 if he was a day, dressed in a raincoat and flat hat and riding an elderly brown shopper / folder thing. Skids were neither requested nor given.
As time passed the other path users gradually thinned out and I was left alone with the sunshine and insects, hundreds of which were pinging off my forehead. Things continued in this sort of vein alongside the railway with its train-baiting graffiti, over a few bridges (I have pictures but can't be bothered embedding them) and through some woods and before I knew it I was in Bath, or rather what appeared to be a small industrial estate on the outskirts of Bath. A bit of gesticulating at buses later and I was cruising into the centre, followed by a cruise out again when I realised I hadn't really planned on doing anything when I got there.
A quick coffee and some cheap calories, and I was heading back the way I had come. By this time the beardy cyclo-tourist types were out on force so it was a sociable ride home with the sun now at my back. Total time elapsed back to Temple Meads was, er, no idea, though I think it took about an hour each way (with an extra thirty minutes while I worked out how to refold the thing).
Overall a pretty nice excursion, though I'm not sure I'd want to go any further than that without drops. I only saw one other Bromptonenger all morning.