Tell us about your weekend ride

First shorts and ss top ride of the year. Supplemented with a burner for the 8am start.

Ride. https://www.komoot.com/tour/352972016?ref=aso

Greater Gravchester - 100mile mainly off-road loop around the M60. Been working on it for a while and finally got to ride it in its entirety. Bone dry conditions made it super fun and got to test out my new rimpact inserts on a few Pennine bridle spicy sections.

Route with tweaks https://www.komoot.com/tour/269863235?ref=atd

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Approaching Windsor town centre after a Up Prune Down Crump ride, @NorthLondonLight myself are denounced as 'wankers' by the passenger of an 03 Honda Jazz.
We cordially acknowledge his superior experience.

scotland's rubbish don't come

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@cozey Can confirm.

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@cozey @Stoo61 looks great, where is this?

my pics are the moor road between dalry and fairlie (top) & brisbane glen just outside largs (bottom)

Route out of Aberfoyle to the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond

Thanks both, great shots!

Nice little pootle. Shoulder and arm held up mostly, which was nice.

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Honda passengers sadly too ignorant to understand the beautiful irony of calling someone a wanker while being conveyed in a Jazz

Indeed!

Would've repped.

They are from henceforth to be known as Honda Bukkakes.

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Try selecting the picture several times (while editing your post) before clicking 'save changes'. That usually works.

It seemed not to load, and then suddenly all the attempts were up!

Willesden-Oxford-Willesden

Tuesday and Wednesday this week - we retired people don't really have weekends.

Naturally, this can't be claimed as an outstanding athletic effort, but I would like to have my age and the age of my bike taken into account (Sunbeam, with luggage see pic below). I will draw a discreet veil over exactly how long the 55 miles took me as I went slowly and cautiously on the way out (into the wind) in the hope I'd be OK for the next day and that did seem to work.

As I've said before, once you get west of High Wycombe the A 40 is almost empty of traffic - it's probably quieter now than at any time since the last war - the problem lies in getting to West Wycombe.

However there's a worsening problem - the road surface, particularly near the left hand edge of the road, which is the part one normally rides on, is getting really rough. In some places almost every drain cover is surrounded by a deep hole, and although there is little traffic sod's law says that there will be a lorry behind you just when you need to move out to avoid these. I had to brake to a standstill at one point because of this situation. This is bad enough for an individual, but it would make group riding very tricky. Private affluence, public squalor.

The French for pothole is 'nid de poule' literally a 'chicken's nest' - it's surprising the term exists because they are so rare on French roads.

The main interest is, I hope, that it is still possible to ride from city to city, even for the aged riding an elderly bike.

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@clubman.

You take as long as you like.

SA 3 speed?

Enjoy the ride, that is the main objective.

Hope I'm still riding 'later in life' like you obviously are.

Cheers

Sorry about the slow reply to your question.

Yes, it's a Sturmey 3 speed.

I normally use an AM on this bike, but because I needed to drag a good twenty pounds of luggage up to Stokenchurch I changed to an AW for this trip. With a 65" middle gear this gives about a 48" bottom gear instead of the 56" with the AM.

When I was young I would never have considered using a Sturmey, but now I find them useful. They're low maintenance, silent and, so far, completely reliable.

It's just a pity that Henry Sturmey had such bizarre ideas about gearing; the AW (by far the most common) gives 25% down from direct drive, and 33% up - it would be a lot more use if this was the other way round!

Rode out to Somerset to see mum who was holidaying there. 166 miles and I hadn't really been doing much riding lately so I can definitely feel it. Lovely route through, apart from being dumped on the Ridgeway. Skinny tyres at 120psi were not much fun on that.
Saw loads of wildlife, hares, kestrels, mice and bats plus loads of red kites, some flying just a few metres overhead. Also nearly had a barn owl fly into my face in the dark.

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120psi

Who still does this?

People still riding 25mm

I still have 23mm tyres on some bikes and the only time I've gone near 120psi was either accident or trying to get a stubborn tyre to seat and I'm 92kg. 120+ is ridic unless you're riding track. Didn't we just spend 15 years of LFGSS trying to educate people about this?

I think that is 23mm. Track bike is 19mm and go up to 130psi. Never knowingly fashionable, that's me.

On the track (assuming it's actually smooth) skinny, high pressure tyres make sense.
When I used to use 23mm everywhere on the road I'd be using around 100psi and probably should've dropped it but I was still hung up on the higher is better mentality.