Tell us about your weekend ride

We've got a wedding to go to, sadly...

Weddings are great!

Ride around (studio) ghibli country for my birthday 🎂 with my friend Paul. The least flakey of my bike friends and most hardcore as he rides all around here on his stock Schwinn super sport with its high ass 80’s gearing. We fed some crows on accident and baptized ourselves in lactic acid on 2 and 1/2 gnarly climbs.

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Multi post my bad

Practically a public holiday already, so...

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Anyone got any suggestions for a 40-50km loop on the road from London Bridge? Thanks!

starting to ride longer rides more regularly.
today did 25k (not much for some but big for me) befor work a loop with a couple of hills.....#slowlyturningmamil

This weekend @Cycliste and I were in Basel, riding with @Cycliste's Swiss club, the Veloclub Allschwill. On Sunday it was the Gempen hillclimb from Dornach to Gempen or, to give it its official name, the Rad-Bergzeitfahren Dornach-Gempen. I only got the chance to recce half the climb before the race, and I took it fairly steadily, so I was frankly quite slow. I beat @Cycliste, but only by ten seconds:

On Sunday it was the Schwarzbeube Rundfahrt, also starting and finishing in Dornach, which we rode with members of the VCA. @Cycliste told me it would be like a gentle club ride. In fact, it was bloody hard as the climbs aren't that long but the VCA riders really shift up them. A good day's riding though.

They do have a crazy way of rotating riders when riding in a group though, where the two riders at the front split off to both sides and the long group of riders 2-abreast ride between them, with the result that you end up riding 4-abreast for long periods of time, usually on roads that aren't really wide enough for that sort of tomfoolery. Craziness.

Berkshire. Sunday. All the sunshine, our first off road adventure / picnic lunch.

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Already missing last weekend's riding which saw us complete the final leg of Land's End to John o'Groats. Last Friday, getting close to the far Northern coast:

(More here.)

On the other hand, it was refreshing getting back on the Summer bike this week without any luggage. Couldn't resist stopping this morning to take this pic, and fantasise that I'd got to Jo'G and just kept going. :)

Can confirm forum Cambridge route still great and today was a great day to be on the bike.

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and the DNA path

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A long weekend trip to the Cliffs of Møn south of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Best experience on a bicycle, ever.

I wrote a bit about it on my website: http://stridsland.com/portfolio/mons-klint/

Doing some laps at richmond park this aftenoon and theres a group of teens thrown a glass bottle on the road and that case i missed out to avoid those tiny little glass that get into my rear tyre was riding smooth then i realesed something wrong i stop and check my both tyre and i was like fuckinell...my mates took my puncture kits and they're headback home for bbq called my otherhalf to get me an uber then finally one gentleman stop and lend me his spare innertube,short valve doesnt take a pump long story short he's gone is a second because his wife going out for a dinner...then i realised again no tyre lever and pump ffs nightmare, few mins of waiting one lovely chap stop and ask me if im okey i said im in a bad day its my last lap out of 8 and i get punctured finally he got me a very very very long valve pump and a tyre lever he save my day...thanks for you mate if your here.....anyway he got the same bike as me a canyon cf slx black and a deep zipp 303, forgot to take his number hopefully I'll ride with him next time and return the inner tube......

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stål!?

Good work. Keep it up, I know it can be daunting when you see how far some here go and even worse when you see how quick.

Awesome. My son's six and just starting to get going on his bike. Can't wait to be doing this with him very soon.

Had some of those 'these are some of the best days of my life' days this past (long) weekend in Scotland. Burma Road, Cairngorm Loop with an overnight at the Hutchinson Bothy, Laggan Wolftrax, Coulags/Achnashellach loop. I want to live forever!

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Wow! Share the details of the routes? I wan to copy.

Last weekend @Cycliste and I went to Oudenaarde for the Retro Ronde van Vlaanderen. Things kicked off on Saturday morning, with a quick 29km ride featuring the infamous Paterberg and Koppenberg cobbled climbs. They used to form part of the main route, but this didn't this year, hence the extra ride on Saturday morning. After cruising along the canals outside Oudenaarde we made it to the climbs.

@Cycliste managed to ride up both climbs thanks to her Cyclotouriste 38/26 chainrings. I made it up despite my Campag 52/42 rings. Here's our bikes at the top of the Paterberg:

Mine is the Hetchins (aka The Bike That Taste Forgot) and @Cycliste's is the teeny Roberts next to it.

On Saturday afternoon there was short circuit racing on a very tight 130m circuit laid out in the town square. The format was for everyone to do a 3 lap time trial on the course (2 at a time, but the only relevant issue was the times) and then the 16 fastest geared bikes to go through to 3 lap pursuit-style races. We didn't make it out of qualifying. @Cycliste's excuse was that she just wanted to sit in the sunshine and drink beer, so didn't try very hard. Mine was that my left foot came out of my pedal off the start, so I lost a lot of time while I fumbled around trying to poke my shoe into an unaccustomed toe-strap. Anyway, we were out, so drank lots of beer and watched the racing, with excellent multi-lingual commentary from the Master of Ceremonies who turned out to be the dapper chap dressed in tweed who was the only other guest at the tiny B&B we were staying at who we'd met at breakfast. Here's me wheezing and kaflumping round the circuit.

Sunday was the main event, the Retro Ronde itself. There were a variety of different lengths of courses, so obviously @Cycliste and I went for the longest one at 160km, which meant an 8.30am start. We were soon dropped by pretty much everyone else doing the 160km course, partially because @Cycliste is terrified by the almost complete uselessness of the Dura Ace brakes on her Roberts, partially because she was the only woman doing the 160km event and struggled to hold the pace on the fast flat bits, and partially because while @Cycliste is a strong rider she is glacially slow on cobbles. I did the Good Boyfriend thing and waited. Did I mention the cobbles? There were cobbles.

And gravel. And windmills.

We caught up with some of the other people doing the 160km course at the second feed stop, at which there was another windmill.

It had a sign outside saying 'Open' so we went to have a look around, after having tried the dark red fruit juice which turned out to be a mixture of apple and beetroot. Bleugh. We ended up having the full guided tour of the inside of the windmill (which was busy turning away), including the very top where the main driveshaft from the sails connects to the grinding stones.

It was fascinating, while at the same time utterly terrifying as there were no safety rails, guards or barriers whatsoever, and you got the distinct impression that all the wooden wheels, teeth and gears weren't going to stop no matter which body part you managed to get stuck in them. Really enjoyable though.

After that it was more cobbles

more gravel, more hills and some excellent food stops, the last one featuring free beer which is always a bonus. After a long but enjoyable day in the saddle we rolled back into Oudenaarde.

All in all a very enjoyable weekend, and a properly good ride on the Sunday.

tl;dr Did Retro Ronde, rode old bikes, drank beer, all good.

Wow! Share the details of the routes? I wan to copy.

Ditto. That looks awesome.

Great post.

Great calf muscles on display there!

@Cycliste does have very fine and shapely calves. She's secretly quite proud of them.