-
"Tell us about your extended-weekend ride"... OK then, seeing as I'm on hols I went out for a nice ride from Dirtfud to Whitstabubbles. Mostly along NCR1 with few little tweaks here and there to keep me close to the river and good views etc etc etc.
"Yus mate, straight down that path, keep going then turn left just past the Ruskie Submarine". You don't route instructions like that everyday do you?
NCR1 gets a little ruffty tuffty in places but lest us not forget we ARE in the Garden of Ingerlunds...
Nom Noms....
Then out across the main drag to Sheppey (not named after the Blue Peter dog) with the curvaceous bridge in the background...
NCR1 then takes you through some 'urban riverside parks' with strange statements on sticks rising out of the water....
...I agree, Concrete does work best for Skatepark surfaces.
...agreed again, for a house building material I like bricks too.Its a strange characteristic of this route that whilst you're in a built up area like Kemesley/Sittingbourne the signage just seems to disappear whilst out in the bum-end of nowhere you get a ruddy great pole to remind what route yer on!
Oare Creek IIRC, off road but do-able even riding 25c at 100PSI and SS, if you listen carefully to that picture you hear Banjo's being played odd looking yoots sitting in trees.
Back in land a bit and there's field after field of fruit tree's. Having a keen I for tree's I can inform the readership that this is 'male' tree as you can clearly see it's luv-sacks...
"Fields of Gold bruv"...
Then slowly coming back in land we hit Faversham, nice innits.
...which is home of...
Action shot...This is how I roll...
Then a few more miles down the route and we come out Thameside again to Seasalter, home of the infamous sinking rock festival in the 70's...
Whitstable looms closer in the distance, onwards man, don't give up now...
Whahey! Whitstabubbles, we've arrived.
...but I'm a veggie and the smell of fishy bits (stoppit!) makes me ride a bit further out the other end of town to...
...lovely Tankerton, which is quiet and doesn't smell o' fish. Also it has this nice place...
.... to buy this brown liquid...
...thats made up the road which makes me feel giggly and nice and also aids recovery after ~60miles of variable riding surfaces. Proper good fun though.Sleeps soundly.
The end.
-
Lovely stuff. I did my own ride to Whitstable a couple of weeks back on a glorious sunny day.
https://www.strava.com/activities/365191460
A bit disappointed my route didn't take me past a submarine though! I'll have to amend it for next time. Where abouts is it?
-
Not quite the week-end yet, but I did the Daytime Dynamo today. I'd been meaning to do it for weeks but had an annoying virus, so always had to put it off. As I haven't been able to do the proper ride for a few years, this was some small recompense. As it's a great route, it's still lovely in the daytime, although of course not as magical.
Apart from my own lack of fitness, almost everything about the ride was just perfect. No punctures and only two small mechanicals. One was losing the mudguard screw that I'd only put on recently, clearly not very well. Fortunately, there's the excellent Flitch Bikes in Great Dunmow now. A bit later, one of my (cheap shit) bottle cages broke, but it was still possible to carry bottles in it.
I'd looked at the weather forecast for once and tomorrow was promised to be extremely hot, so I dropped everything and decided to ride today. This had the added advantage that shops were open everywhere. I bought just the right amount of food for the ride.
As ever, lots of sights and impressions along the ride; a lucky escape after Wethersfield, where it was clearly imminent for highway engineers to put gravel down on a newly-resurfaced long section of road, including one of my least favourite little hills. Perhaps they're waiting for the week-end. I hate riding on chipped roads and only encountered one a while later in Needham Market, where it was busy enough for most of the gravel to have disappeared, even though it had clearly been put there very recently. I was surprised they did this in a town, but you live and learn.
Lots of roadkill, as usual, which I always find disgusting. Lots of harvesting going on and enormous agricultural machinery being moved along the lanes; a combine harvester, dozens of extremely large tractors, and various other large vehicles, one with tank-type chains. Hardly anyone else on bikes, and when there were, they were riding fat-tyred mountain bikes very slowly. First lots of cars with bikes on top near the coast, and then about half a dozen with bikes on the back. Generally good driving everywhere, no silly overtakes or anything.
I didn't do any major lunch stop but stopped occasionally as the need arose. I'd expected to be very slow owing to the aforementioned lack of fitness but only took about 7 1/2 hours riding time. I've done London-Dunwich in about six hours, but that was at night with much better fitness and without the traffic queues due to roadworks; at Epping, after Leaden Roding, and in a few other places. So, I was very happy with that time. As usual, towards the end I became incredibly slow up the hills but still quick enough along the flat bits.
I had taken a route sheet, but didn't look at it once, as I know the route by heart, and navigation is obviously a lot easier during the day than at night. However, I was not best pleased to find that someone had taken it upon themselves to paint direction arrows on the road in the last part of the ride, starting with the first left turn after Framlingham. It stole my thunder a bit. :)
I didn't look at the time at all until Peasenhall and one of the best things was just that feeling of being in a timeless bubble. When I got to Peasenhall, I was surprised that I'd only taken slightly under seven hours to get there. I'd somehow imagined it must have got much later.
Most of the day had been overcast, which had been ideal, but by that time the sun had come out and never went away again. And while the ride itself was really enjoyable, my favourite bit is always jumping into the sea. Well, it was more a gradual edging in this time, as I was a lot warmer after the ride than usually when I arrive in the early-ish morning. There was no point in risking some kind of shock, but (surprise, surprise) the water was lovely. I swam/doggy-paddled for about half an hour. The weather on the beach was simply unbeatable, hardly any clouds in sight. I tell myself every year that I should get beach shoes (pebbly beach), and one of these days I'll remember to actually do it.
After I'd finished, I was surprised that the café had already closed, but on a weekday it was all a bit dead. It wasn't a problem, as I wasn't hungry, anyway. I rode to Darsham Station and had to wait twenty minutes for a train, with the connection in Ipswich coming after six minutes. However, if I do it again I'll ride back, as (a) I want to, anyway, and (b) £38.40 for a single fare to London is just daylight robbery. I've always hated that you have to pay the same for a single fare as for a return fare.
Anyway, minor gripes. Overall, a near-perfect ride, would ride again. 11/10
-
Have fun! I'd recommend leaving very early, maybe at 6 or 7. It's supposed to be so hot tomorrow and largely cloudless, but I'll also do that next time regardless of the weather just to get to the beach earlier. Take lots of sunscreen.
-
Nice one. Looks like a lovely ride.
Ta, yeah it was, heading out to the Isle o' Grain today.
-
Whoooaaarrrr, thats a mega-ride you did there TTM, respectacles! Nice.
Russhyun Sub can be found here (I hope the link works OK).
You can't actually get on it BTW, its just dumped there! Wiki page -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_U-475_Black_Widow
-
Gloves?! On a day like this?
Yeah, 'security gloves', I have to look after my precious likkle digits :) No really, I have Vitiligo (no skin pigment left so very sensitive to UV) on both hands which is annoyingly spreading all over so I have to glove up and UV barrier protect with factor 50+ to prevent acute burning.
-
@FatManOnAFixie Sorry to hear that, keep riding!
-
Sorry to hear that, keep riding!
Ditto fella, sorry to hear about your Elbow.
-
Legs still tired from setting a PB on my hilly 30 mile Wrotham loop the day plus too hot for a ride yesterday... but I still went anyway, arf arf arf!
Nice sort of loop along a route I've never done before. Roads were quiet most of the way, saw loadsa sporty riders with speedy bikes and pointy helmets going in the opposite direction as there was some sort of race event going on yesterday down Grain way.
I made it as far East as I could go on Hoo Peninsular where upon I ran out of Ingerluhnd to ride on...
Beaches were mobbed!
Looked at a property for sale down there but it weren't for us, the driveway needs doing and its a long way to the shops...
So I made my way back to Dirtfud as the temperature started peaking late yesterday afternoon, I think I was out in the sun too long cos I'm sure I saw a Ferry floating across a Cow Pasture...
Was fun. 10/10 Would hallucinate and push myself in the Sunshine again :-)
-
Supposed to have done a daytime Dunwich Dynamo on Saturday staying overnight at Satis Lodge in Darsham as a birthday treat. Failed to follow Oliver's advice and had an 8am departure. 30deg temps proved a bit too much for my girlfriend who started vomiting due to the heat and we trained the rest of the way from the 120km mark at Sudbury. Lovely route out through Essex. Rode to Dunwich this morning. Feels like a bit of a failure and was hugely disappointed at not completing the ride as I was feeling great! Lovely times though.
-
There was a 100km Gravel Ride near the Meuse river in the north east of my province yesterday. It was about 70km from my home and I figured I'd need a hard training ride, because there's some tough rides scheduled in the weeks to come.
So I decided to go there on bike (fixed, 23mm tyres). The GPS route to the start that I planned had some surprise off-road bits as well
Upon arrival there were only 2 or 3 other guys who thought they would make it on skinny-ish road tyres, the rest were on mountain/monster/gravel/cyclocross bikes.
The ride was fun, the gravel bits were perfect and fast, but the loose sand, river crossings and high grass passages were quite challenging with 46x16 gearing.
I punctured twice, crashed once, got some sticks in the gears but managed to come in 2nd just behind a guy on a Steamroller with 40mm knobblies. Behind me there was a guy with a full suspension 29er.
Of course, it wasn't a race, but it was nice to make it to the finish that fast with the opposite of the recommended gear.
The way back was OK, managed to keep up a decent pace until cramps started to hit my hamstrings at about 10km from home. Total was 242km for the day, on, off and on road: https://www.strava.com/activities/374912338
Did a short recovery spin with the missus this morning to make sure I can still climb the stairs to the bedroom tonight... I bet I will feel all sorts of muscle aches tomorrow. When's the next? ;-)
-
I reminded myself that country lanes can be ridden in the sunshine, and not only at dead of night, with a ride down to Cuckmere Haven yesterday. I'm old, out of shape and overweight at the moment, and my route evolved as I rode. There were a couple of places where I'd stopped to work out which way to go next, and I then forgot to switch the gar in back on, so there are some odd straight sections where I'm also missing rolling time, so don't pay attention to the overall stats.
It began with the dreary slog through suburbia, but quickly became more fun as I reached the North Downs - the descent to Westerham was the fastest I've ever managed. Edenbridge had a couple of Brixton Cycles riders, and there were plenty of other riders out there. The Ashdown Forest (Jibb Jack Lane in particular) was a bit of a grind, but with some rewarding views and descents. After a very short section of A22 beyond Uckfield I turned down Park Lane which was unadulterated cycling joy, and the lanes around Ripe were also about as good as they get.
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/875071650
-
It's been a wee while...
The view is from Kirkstone Pass, Cumbria.
The last time I was in the area I was half way along from Snowdon to Fort William. This time I'm on a family holiday with my wife, son, and a bunch of similar people combinations. Everything is soft play cafés, swing parks and small talk.
I've only been back on a bike for a month or so, after about 18 months of attempting the care of a small person. Time, fitness and motivation are thin on the ground ...but I thought I'd better take a bike on holiday all the same. It's been nice to be a literal five minutes away from such a solid climb (Kirkstone is something of a favourite). I've not been any further than up it and down it once or twice each day, but given the current sitch, that's done me fine.
I also had a first ever go on a mountain bike (at Grizedale), which I found fucking frightening but ultimately very rewarding. Mebe I'll get one, mebe not.
Hope all's well and that everyone's riding more than me,
Turrah.
1 Attachment
-
-
Congratulations! Nice to hear from you.
And thank you for the invitation to state that I rode the distance of over three times Dunwich and back with quiet a bit more climbing in under 90h this week ;-)
I strongly advise you consider family holidays in France in four years time.
Thuekr
FatManOnAFixie
t_w
TTM
*Matt*
Oliver Schick
miro_o
dglshrn
moocher
peter_v
Ludd
FridayMarch26th
fussballclub-
Post a reply
About
Tell us about your weekend ride
Posted by
Telling you about my tuesday bride
2 Attachments