Audax rides

That looks stunning! Well done!

I'll get some more photos up in a gallery or something. I probably should blog about it but I can't really be arsed with that these days.

We were on this one too. Agree with the driving in Medway, especially around Rochester.

There were some good bits thou and it was cool to have the controls at the beach. Plus the weather was a nice surprise after I thought it was going to be cloudy all day.

What was the new town called that we went through later in the ride? It looked like it had been picked out of a "american town" catalogue.

Snap !

is that where the burnt barn is?

I don't think so - are you thinking of the one on the MoK route? That's Mystole Lane which is further east than this route (I believe)

Congratulations. The first photo is astonishingly good.

There were some good bits thou

Yeah my post was a bit too shitty, there were definitely good bits and bright sunny day!

What was the new town called that we went through later in the ride? It looked like it had been picked out of a "american town" catalogue.

Holborough Lakes, so strange!

ah yes! looks so similar

Not bad for riding along behind her with a shitty XCover phone camera eh? :)

I carried my little Sony camera too so I'm going to see what I got from that. Mostly I was just doing point and shoot pics rather than any proper photos but it might let me work on them a bit. Unforunately my RAW editor has expired so I need to get something else. Looking at https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/#buy

I like this one too...

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I must have been lucky with traffic on the way to the sea and thought the route was pretty interesting - someone had obviously spent a lot of time finding ways to string the least-bad roads together. Might have benefited from a 6am start.

I did see @Ruserius on the Isle of Grain but I was going the other way tucked in behind a wall of club riders hiding from the headwind.

I didn't find it too bad either, although there were a couple of bad eggs including a driver who simply had to use his screen wash when passing me and another who refused to give way at a roundabout. I quite enjoyed the route overall, I do like a bit of main road though. My main beef was that wind heading back west which didn't let up until Birling Hill.

So as noted I made it round the 23,500m of climbing on Alpi 4000 fixed, with minimal walking - uphill gravel at altitude in the heat is not my thing (or many others from looking around).

Reprised my double-fixed setup from the TCR with 44/46T chainrings on a Sugino RD2 and slightly wider BB (106mm I think) for the inner to clear chainstays and my third bottle mount, however having two cogs on one side as before is bending the Fixed Wheel Challenge rules somewhat I believe, so stuck with the Halo FIX-G hub for the 16T fatfoot cog spaced for the outer ring but had a 18T threaded onto the reverse side with a velosolo spacer to get the chainline dialled in. Worked a treat, flipping the wheel at the bottom/top of climbs and with the 44/18 (66") and 46/16 (77") combinations meaning the wheel position didn't move and could continue to use the rear brake without adjustment.

For shortish descents (<500m or so), eg Finestre to Sestriere stayed in the low gear and dragged the rear brake to give my knees a bit of break - they were working hard enough! The descents were much more fun than I expected, the more technical the better, eg off Passo Gavia, found I could leg-brake into the hairpins, modulate the power though the apex and then full power on, overtaking freewheelers in the process.

No mechanicals at all, didn't even pump up my tyres once, though did have to remove the half-link as I'd managed to stretch the chain to the point it was no longer needed, and also had to redo the tape on the bars as I'd managed to pull that off on some of the harder climbs.

Settled into a routine of aiming to stop near the base of climbs and then getting on the road pre-dawn for a few hours of respite from the heat and traffic. The early start made it more convenient to start searching for hotels in the early evening as only spent half the nights in the dormitories for comfort as well as route positioning reasons.

Oh and as mentioned, I did it by train as a #nofly #RinkoBike trip: Thursday Eurostar London-Paris and TGV Paris-Milan, reassembled the bike and overnighted there, then Friday Milan-Tirano and cycled the 40km from there which was all pretty smooth. The return was slight messier as there were engineering work on the Trenord line so chucked the bike into its bag outside a Bormio pub in about 20mins flat with hippy watching on then bus -> rail-replacement bus -> commuter train (no bike spaces!) to Milan. Back to Paris on Saturday to meet the missus, hang out in brasseries, and see Jarvis perform Chansons d’Ennui Tip-Top plus some JARV IS songs which was brilliant and a total counterpoint to the previous week, before a Eurostar home on Sunday night.

Loved pretty much of all of it apart from maybe that single squat toilet at one control shared with hundreds of other riders...

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Oh and as mentioned, I did it by train as a #nofly #RinkoBike trip: Thursday Eurostar London-Paris

how did they accept your bike?

It's luggage sized, so doesn't come under their bike/bike box rules (or lack of)

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1. remove rim brakes with cables, handlebar and stem all in one, stick in a bag
   
2. remove front fork, scrabble around and pick up headset parts off the grass
   
3. remove both wheels
   
4. remove seatpost and saddle
   
5. strap everything together, stick in £20 folding bike bag that matches the 85cm Eurostar/TGV max dimension
   

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will you marry me

Unbelievably amazing fixed riding

I want to see someone do that with Di2/hydro setup.

I would LOVE to carry my normal bike past every jobsworth knobber watching luggage on every plane, train, bus, etc. Would be epic.

With external hydro cables just tied onto the frame should be fairly straightforward to remove the brakes and bars in one go I would have thought.

external hydro cables

You're funny.

The forks could probably come off with the bars but the rear would need to stay attached. I guess it could be made to work. I'd probably have to lose the aerobars too.

Obviously easier for me to buy a Brompton (n+1) than mess with the Mason.

Incredible riding

Absolutely awesome. Well done.

amazing effort.

Thanks everyone. FWIW the ride is here: https://www.strava.com/activities/7400620194