Tell us about your weekend ride

Summer in DK is back

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That's incredible...

did you sleep?

We had an hour in a graveyard.
There was lots of weather. Tough but incredible route. There's a few photos on Instagram.
#extremepointsofyorkshire

Switzerland this weekend for me, and @Cycliste decided that we should go up and down the Dent de Morcles. You can't get all the way over the top of the pass on road bikes, so it would have to be a there and back ride, but there's a buvette at 1675m so we made that our destination.

The bottom part of the climb climbs up through the woods, basically up the side of a cliff with many, many hairpins. And some rather splendid scenery.

Once you get out of the woods it gets a bit flatter, but still many hairpins as you climb out of the village of Morcles.

For the last few kms before the buvette the road turns to gravel, with some mahoosive drainage channels running across it.

At the buvette there's a splended view of the Dent de Morcles itself in one direction.

And a view of the Rhone valley running into Lake Geneva on the other side.

Quick bit of food and some drinks, and it's time to head back to Bex train station. Not a long ride, but a good one, and the altimetry chart has a pleasing simplicity to it.

That looks absolutely beautiful.

Even for someone jaded and cynical as me, the scenery today was pretty marvellous. Apparently it's going to rain tomorrow though. Back to grumpy old sweary fucksticks.

As it turned out, the weather was excellent in the afternoon, so we went for another short but scenic ride. Up from Vevey to Chatel St Denis via Chardonne and Jogny, then down to Blonay and up to the local ski resort at Les Plaiedes. This is on the way up to Les Plaiedes.

We were planning to get something to eat at the Café du Signal but it was shut, so we went exploring at the top of the climb and found a new buvette we hadn't been to before, the Buvette des Motalles.

After a very good cheese fondue and a bottle of Chardonne, we started the descent back down to the mountain:

Back down into Blonay.

Not a huge ride, but very scenic. And cheesey.

@danstuff Great part of the world. My mum was raised close to Chatel St Denis. I used to hike around at Les Pleiades as a kid. Last time I brought my wife up there before we moved down under. If I remember correctly, there's a pretty good restaurant on top as well, and the last bit to it has a walking path, a train line and a gravel-y service road which might or might not be cycleable.

Also, cycling after cheese Fondue ... bleurgh ... but I sure hope it was moité-moité and you should drink Fendant with it!

The restaurant at the top of Les Pleiades is pretty good, but I wouldn't fancy riding the track up to it on a road bike. I've done it on a mountain bike, but only downhill I think. The fondue was indeed moitié-moitié, and happily the ride was almost entirely downhill after the buvette. Long climbs after a fondue would indeed be a bit unpleasant. As for the wine, I would've gone for a Fendant myself - @Cycliste would have gone for a Johannisberg I suspect - but they only had Chardonne in a 75cl bottle. And 50cl is never going to be enough to wash down a fondue for two.

That depends ... 50cl wine and 50cl kirsch should be ample supply.

Are you guys based around Vevey while there?

Yep, definitely enough, and definitely wouldn't want to be riding after 50cl of kirsch! Yes, based in Vevey from time to time at the weekends.

Just got back to NL from a week in sunny Mallorca, and the weather was just as nice, so we had a great relaxed 100+km ride over the dikes along the rivers. Holland can be very beautiful!

https://www.strava.com/activities/1231366457 (don't copy this one should you want to ride here, just ask me for the .gpx, made a mistake near the end and ended up in totally walker/cyclist/car-congested tourist hell twice around a popular nature/recreational area named Loonse en Drunense Duinen)

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Got badgered to go on the "cancer voices SA challenge", which was a bit of a weird scene at first but ended up being a mostly solitary 75k around the hills, with nice roads I had never taken before.

In the end I had 80k on the clock, and tagged on another 20k to hit my Strava challenge thingy, but the old Garmin I have crapped itself and corrupted the file.

My legs know about it though.

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Cold headwinds.
Struggled.
Vegancheese toasty at home.
Tea.
Happy.

Drank a load of Belgian beer. Watching TV. Waiting for Deliveroo.

Might put cycling on TV. That's almost the same as riding, right?

Brockley to Brighton.
First ride of any distance in 4 years. I hurt! My knee especially. Ditchling was horrible. The top over the downs was incredibly windy, had to actively pedal down in to Brighton.
Standard photo;

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If the gooch gets numb from the sofa then of course... #goochwatch

Gooch intact but early days...

It was last weekend, but I've just managed to get day one of a ride report from the Cairngorms up. Teaser shot below, you get the full technicolour experience at this link: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/312267/#comment13921372

Looks ace!

This weekend @bsb and I cycled to Paris. We left on Friday afternoon at 3pm for the 11pm ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe; obviously the timing was very generous for the relatively flat 70km route but the idea was to allow for plenty of refreshment breaks. What wasn't accounted for was that the ferry had a 3h delay, and the two buses worth of french teenager s roaming around the terminal. So plenty of time for a nice fish and chips, livened up by the teenage dramas constantly unfolding around us.

Anyway, we eventually arrived in Dieppe at 6h30 and set off. The plan for the day was to meet up with two friends riding towards us from Paris and complete the trip with them. Arriving at 6h30 rather than 4 meant we had much less darkness to contend with - and more importantly no rain at all. Up until Forge-Les-Eaux we rode on the Avenue Verte, an old decommissioned railway, a dead-straight bout of smooth tarmac going slowly uphill for 50 km. After the BEST omelette EVER in Forge-les-Eaux we had a bit of "big" road bashing until Gournay-en-Bray and we finally met the Parisian crew 15km before Chaumont-En-Vexin; we quickly got there and had the second gustatory satisfaction of the day in the form of some very nice pizzas.

After that the terrain got more rolling as we went through the Vexin, which was one of the nicest part of the trip for sure. Then a bit of a drag as we reached Paris' suburb, and we made our entry greeted by exhaust gas and gridlocked junctions (it was rush hour, you see).

A nice day and a half out, great weather, good routes and very fixed-friendly, even if the last French bit required a bit of ompf to get over.

I found some really ok single track in beech woods near the North Circ E Finchley area. About 1 mile from my flat. Nuts!!! So. Accompanied by the A406 traffic roar I looned around in the woods for an hour or so and stopped to speak to a couple of dog walkers, the only ones, who were tip top friendly. Finished with an ale in Maddens, in the High Rd Will do that again.

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Second time 100k this month. Weather was about to get mad windy, so I started really early on Sunday morning. This time starting with a climb up the old freeway to Lofty, then over to ride to Montacute Road, where I decided I'd have a recce of Corkscrew Road by going down. Turns out it's a hell of a climb, kicking off with a very straight and steep ramp, then 4 pretty cool switchbacks. Two guys came up and they looked like they were blowing a gasket. Quick deliberation whether I'd turn around at the bottom to do it when "Nah!" and of I was, rolling down Gorge Road and subsequently all the way to the Beach. Meanwhile the wind had picked up and I was flying along the shore with it pushing me in the back. By the time I had 10k to go to get my 100 and it was time to turn around there were 50k gusts happening, so I had to turn into a headwind which absolutely broke me for the final ks.

https://www.strava.com/athletes/15510353