Tell us about your weekend ride

Solo? Definitely not, its not the endurance part, but the mental aspect. I get bored very easily.

I love the time to think to myself. Sure there are low points where I think about giving up, usually:

• I'm bored
  
• Why am I doing this
  
• I don't need to prove anything to anyone
  
• I'm tired, it's cold/wet/rainy or even too hot
  
  

but I know I just have to push on through the low points. "let's see how I think in an hour" usually works for me.

Having company helps, I'm far less likely to consider giving up on a ride if I'm riding with someone else, but I've happily done some 400km rides on my own for all but the first 5km or so. I only really rode with someone else for 400km of PBP, so that left 800km of riding on my own (never really more than 100 yards from another rider though, given there were 5000 people doing it).

Summer never ends

Pretty sure summer just ended..

That was one wet morning on the bike.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/605468682

I'm in Colorado right now, and a hopeful post on The Paceline saw a nice chap called Jay arrive outside my flat at half eight this morning- with a bike for me on the back of his car.

We drove over to the foot of the Rockies and then did a 90km loop with 1.8km of climbing in truly stunning scenery.

My bike for the ride - inner ring remained untouched:

The start:

BTW the Fenix II is a total piece of shit - it's inserted a couple of track points in the middle of this ride that have a 20 hour period attached to them, which has FUBAR'd everything, second time it's done this.

Stunning snowcaps.

It's beautiful up here, we got to just over 9,000 feet - those peaks are ~14,000 I believe.

In the end we only did Col d'Aspin once, not twice. We went back to Arreau over the Col de Beyrede - lots of cow poo, some very steep sections, and a surprising lack of tarmac on some of the steep bits.

In the end we didn't have time to loop round and do the Col d'Aspin from the other direction as we'd planned, so we went and did the Col du Portillon instead, given that it was right next door to the hotel.

Total for the day: 56.8km, 1784m climbing

Wednesday was a day off/transit day, but on Thursday we did Tourmalet. A fantastic ride, as you'd expect, with some stunning views.

Here's @Cycliste getting to the top

The cafe at the top was shut - obviously not enough custom...

Totals for the day: 103.3km, 2,067m climbing.

The next day we did the Col de Portalet, a climb up to the Spanish border. As usual, all the French cafes and restaurants were either shut or couldn't be bothered to serve us, all the Spanish ones over the border were open. Some more great views though.

Total for the day: 62.1km, 1,315m of climbing. We were going to do the Hautacam at the end of the day too, but in the end decided to save our energy as yesterday we did the Col d'Aubisque.

Day's totals: 119.2km, 2,220m climbing

Overall an excellent week's cycling, although I still can't get over the French attitude towards serving potential customers. Even those places which were open generally couldn't be bothered to serve us. No wonder their economy's in the pits. Next time we go to the Pyrenees, we'll stick to Spain.

The cafe at the top was shut - obviously not enough custom...

Be glad it is, they're amazingly expensive (which is no surprise).

1+ on Spain being better overall, cheaper too.

Hear hear, same experience on a Girona > Bilbao trip last year, we had one stage ending and the next starting in France, so glad to be back in Spain after the worst service and worst lunch of all week. Shocking to see the difference in how they treated us compared to the locals.

100 peaks miles on a beautiful day, stubled across the Monsal HC and stopped in Bakewell for tart. Fuck winter.

I rode to Glastonbury from manchester on my own this year, (http://www.strava.com/activities/160229301) nearly 13 hours moving. I quite enjoy the long hours, gives you time to think about things properly. Plan on doing PBP at some point in the future, probably once i've stopped racing though.

Yesterday was the day of L'Eroica 2014 (my 4th and it does not get any easier). The scenery and atmosphere is unbeatable, truly recommended!

Arrived at the start at 5.30

some prefer to start with a fag ;)

just after sunrise

climbing on the strade bianche, of which there is plenty - the 205k has about 110k of unpaved and 3700m alt

my mates encountered some more old steel along the 135k route

Tuscany is beautiful

this is the stuff, about 110k of it on the long route, most of it not so nice and smooth ;-)

fixing my broken chain

Castelnuovo is the rest stop where unevitably the tiredness starts to hit

The best beer in the world is whatever you can get your hands on after the finish. Probably there again if the registering lottery is kind enough!

Stuck the Garmin in my back pocket; app.strava.com/activities/2037259­59

I did London—Paris—London this weekend, inspired by a few specific posts on this thread but mostly the general feel of just getting out there.

Some pics are available, each one is briefly captioned if you click on it: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100652651912744.1073741826.61300199&type=1&l=aa1a84cc29

Let me know if you have any questions.

You legend. Looks fun. Care to share your route and anything you would have done differently? This is my next planned adventure.

My only non-obvious tip is to buy a cheap blanket and mask in the Newhaven Co-Op to help you sleep on the ferry. Also, the food on the ferry is decent enough that you only need to get to the terminal one hour before it leaves - I padded the time to ensure I could get some proper food for the next day's cycling, but I needn't have bothered.

I wouldn't have done much differently apart from ensuring I could check into my airbnb earlier - had to hang around for 5 hours before I could have a shower, etc. Maybe another light for L'Avenue Verte? I would also have left London a little later - could have easily done it in 24 hours (as that's a "thing") but ended up hanging around Newhaven for hours.

Needs very little planning and gear btw. I did most of it Friday morning (so many routes online) and even booked my accommodation when I halfway to the ferry..

Not telling u about my weekend ride

Joined Julian Sayarer (Life Cycles and one-time Round the World record holder) for a few days of his 1000 mile UK book promotion tour. Chester down to Ludlow, crossing in and out of Wales and England and in and out of various good and not so good pubs. My first time bivvy-bagged. Have to say I loved it!

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Julian's bike....

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The view in the morning.....

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The view in the evening.....

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Free sausage rolls? o_O

Yes - now that's a cyclists pub!

Free sausage rolls? o_O

I was about to say exactly this. All thoughts of bikes and rides forgotten, just "free sausage rolls?! WHERE"