Tell us about your weekend ride

Ha, are they dissin' your skinsuit?
@rive_gauche @TooTallTim
It's like people in the south view it as a fashion parade. The craze for stupid socks and '#sockdoping' pisses me off in particular.

I guess it's worst in the more affluent areas in south /east where it's worst and the 'my new thing is bikes, let's get a cervelo and all the rapha' has the most resource behind it

4 days long weekend tour of norther Cornwall, EPIC.

https://www.strava.com/activities/670639521

worked from home, logged off at 4:30, did a couple of hours offroad in the sunshine. collected fish and chips on the way home.

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Love that pic; superb composition. What did you take it with?

A camera.

Helpful...

I was just wondering how it would look as a print.

Nice! Our paths may have crossed, we've been staying in Lostwithiel/Fowey for the past week!

I did that 'Drakes Trail' from Plymouth to Tavistock and back again on ye-olde-fixye, that was proper fun. Uphill almost all the way to Tavi, stopped for nourishment then bombed it (for me) back to Plymuff. Lovely tunnels and bridges to cross.

Persons passed = ~3476.
Passed by persons = 0.

Big kid mode engaged, whahey!

Went with family to Lee Valley outdoor circuit. Fantastic Condor hire bikes for them. Not many other people using the track. Everyone gets to ride at their chosen pace without losing each other. 10/10.

soft pillow underneath bum now! yesterday's was a great ride with about 80% unpaved, I had no idea there were so many gravel roads in that area. beautiful nature too, would ride again, maybe take train to and fro though ;)

https://www.relive.cc/view/674785607

well done mate!

this came past my front door, couldn't enter unlicensed , went out with my new Garmin, felt shite as kept taking me on a bike less road route, so switched off and used my nose

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this girl won the women's by a good lead , and I shook her hand

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flower time

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also , lead in the men's with the "baby dump" kit , ace name!

hahaha, yes! that team name baffles me every time I see it. 'dump' is used mostly for very cheap outlet stores in NL (as you probably know).

I did my weekend ride early because the weather looks like its going to be nutters on Satdee and Sundee Ive got other stuff planned.

I ticked the Southend box today. 67.7 miles of hard but rewarding fixied fun.

forgot i posted this. was rather tired after cycling and carbs.

it was taken with a Samsung S5. another one from the same ride.

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Having missed the opportunity to join the Dunwich Dynamo this year I thought I’d run my own version from my hometown – albeit setting off a little earlier. Ride totalled a 195 miles (300km) of mostly quiet A and B roads with a bit of gravel thrown in.
Prep involved throwing as much food, clothing and general supplies as I could in an Ortleib, creating a Garmin course and then setting off. Would far rather have too much than too little on my first 300km ride.

Set off at 7.30am to beautiful weather and the slightest hint of a headwind. Despite being on the usually treacherous A47, it was fairly quiet and allowed me to focus on keeping HR as low as possible. The Garmin numbers just seemed surreal at this stage.

Then came the first off-road section. I’d scoped it out briefly on Garmin connect and it looked like a dead straight towpath but evidently I didn’t check well enough. I thought of just turning around and detouring using my back-up route but it had been dry all week so took my chances. It started out with the concrete slabs below before transitioning to grassy tractor tracks.

Finally, I got to the on-trend part of the route and had a couple of miles smashing along at more than 10mph. And of course, being the Fens, there was a random burnt-out car with a load of unburnt go-kart tyres inside. A mystery for another day.

Then it was back on quiet A roads all the way to Diss. Up to this point I was pretty downbeat about the whole ride. Why was I doing it, what did I hope to accomplish? Or prove? I could just turn around now and I’ll still have covered more distance than ever before. I was running low on water so stopped at a café for an espresso and a bacon bap. And it completely rejuvenated me. Maybe I’d been following the TCR too much, but the whole time I was sat there, waiting impatiently, I just wanted to get going and start smashing out the distance. This positivity stayed with me for the rest of the day and I really started enjoying myself.

There were a few points of interest on the way there, lots of lost CTC riders staring at maps on beautiful hand-built steel bikes, a gorgeous stately home and loads of wildlife. The roads were a lot quieter now, the sun was out and I just had a daft grin on my face the whole time, despite the constantly rolling terrain (I’m a fenboy at heart).

A shade after the first sign for Dunwich and I hit my first big milestone – 100 miles to go. 115 miles til home was a nice sight, it’s a distance I’ve done before, but 100 miles suddenly made it feel really achievable and like I could finally pick up the pace a bit.

Then, I arrived.

The beach was beautiful but I was already 90 mins down on schedule and, despite knowing I’d have a tailwind home, I couldn’t afford to sit around. I took some pics for the gram, went to the toilet to apply some cold chamois cream (this might’ve been the highlight of the trip) and then got back on the bike to head home. Truly felt surreal to be 95 miles in and only halfway round.

The route home seemed to fly by, ticking off markers I'd passed on the way there. I’d tried hard to keep out of the red the whole time but now I resorted to getting out of the saddle for nearly every hill. By the time I was back on the Fens, I’d really just got into the zone milemunching and with the traffic managed to keep a good average speed for the final leg.

With an hour to go, it even got dark enough to pretend I was on the Dynamo.

I got home 14 hours after I started. On the bike I felt strong but as soon as I started to try and walk I was wobbling all over the place. Big sense of achievement, minimal saddle sores, a successful day out.

Food count:
• 30 flapjack bites
• 6 pancakes
• 6 hot cross buns
• 1 bacon bap
• 1 double espresso
• 1 ham and egg sandwich
• 2 Emmi caffe lattes
• 8 ¼ litres of water

Garmin issues:
• Innumerable. Constant off-course warnings, poor routing through Thetford (my fault I guess) but I probably only lost 10mins total time to navigation issues. Next time I really need to make sure that breadcrumb trail points are closer together so that routing through towns and on parallel roads is clearer.

So, yeah, good times!

And of course, being the Fens, there was a random burnt-out car with a load of unburnt go-kart tyres inside. A mystery for another day.

Michael Carroll's legacy?

#rep for the ride (and write up) although your map shows a Peterborough to Kings Lynn route but not down to Dunwich unless I'm missing something?

Thanks for the heads-up! I'd linked to the wrong image.

On the Michael Carroll tip, normally I see loads of strange fenfolk about on my journeys east but this time I skipped the villages until past Thetford and I was blown away by how picturesque the communities were on the Suffolk/Norfolk border. Really enjoyable to ride through.

I am in Belgium, with the family, for the weekend.

Naturally, I brought a bike. Just had a lovely ride. Brugge, along the canal to Ostend, then along the coast to Zeebrugge and Knokke, then along another canal back to Brugge.

Lots of sunshine, great ride. Food and beverage opportunities in this part of the world are top-notch.

Spent the week riding in Poland/Slovakia around the Tatras. It's brilliant here.

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Been there.

I've spent the weekend sitting on my arse blogging the TCR and drinking.

Anyone wanna buy some bike parts?

Lying in a mountain hostel in jortenheim. Tinderveggen tomorrow. Crazy beautiful place.

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Thanks for sharing your Grain route. Am thinking of riding there with a couple of colleagues to see the LNG terminal because we write about it and are geeks.

Was wondering if you'd tried your second route out yet? Also whether the route you've taken would be impassible on skinny road slicks if it has been raining much... We're struggling to find a date we can all ride before October....