Tell us about your weekend ride

skirmett

The Frog @ Skirmett always makes me smile.

indeed - I enjoyed a gentle chuckle as I rolled past

Great stuff, there's plenty of decent trails around there - will keep an eye out for the Univega when I'm out that way!

I haven't really touched my road bike since picking up a gravel bike in the Spring so it was nice to head out on one of our favourite rides to Whitstable with a strong south-westerly assist for fish & chips, a beer and a whisky chaser on the beach and to prove to myself that I've still got it in the legs.

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l'eroica, last Sunday - between Siena and Radi

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• FullSizeRender.mov

^ Oh I thought vids were directly uploadable now.

Anyway here's some pics, it was wonderful and hard as always, especially for a flatlander like me who didn't do many long rides or miles of elevation at all this year..

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It was a dusty edition

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Perfect autumn weather east of Bristol

(I know, front of front mudguard bothers me too)

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I think this trip deserves a blog post so I should save my typing for that.

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That looks very cool.

I'm waiting for a time in the future when my Tarmac is "vintage". Shouldn't be long now.

If you fit pedals with cages and straps, downtube shifters and route the brake cables above the bars - plus perfect your Italian speaking skills to convince the guy at the starting line the frame was built before 1984, you're in for a nice day of suffering. Although I think you'll suffer even more finding decent Italian craft beers :D

The red wine and food though... magnificent

the nicest of traffic jams <3

I've hunted out plenty of Italian craft beer in my travels (there's actually an Italian craft beer joint just over in Chiswick). But when in Italy I'm usually smashing the cheap red and espressos.

Reckon I can just glue some random cable outers to the frame and at the inspection shout "look over there, a gold-plated Colnago!" and sneak through?

See also...

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Very good. How did you get back from Durness to Glasgow?

Rode back down to Lairg, got train to Inverness, stayed night, train to Glasgow, stayed night, train to London.

Did you pre-book your bikes on the various trains? That was the problem we had getting back from Inverness to Edinburgh - no bikes without reservations, and no reservations available.

Yeah, we pre-booked all of them. Didn't help with some shitball game on when the trains were full and we had to go get on another going via Edinburgh but then they filled that up with football cunts and redirected it to Glasgow so it kinda worked out.

I guess it depends when you go - I have heard it's tricky in summer but we were basically out of season and in summer I'd probably have just ridden back given the much longer days. We couldn't get on one Inverness train (18:30) so just booked an earlier one that had slots (15:30). We still made it with plenty of time (I'm sure there's a pic on here now with me on aerobars heading south to Lairg)

Autumn ride today avec @Zdrenka

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Despite the awful weather today a rejig of plans meant I was able to get out with @harman_mogul and my nephew. Ride was to Windsor and back to meet up with @mespilus but he failed to show because of a bad mechanical failure. Late coffee/snack stop at Artefood in Windsir, which I highly recommend. In all a great day from an unpromising start.

Dry and windy on flat roads...

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Bad news: Got a visit from the p*nct*re fairy.
Good news: Pretty much everything else.

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11 miles into a 25m loop to Eton, (then walk over the pedestrian bridge), to meet up with @NorthLondonLight, just past Stoke Common, the bike went 'tap, tap, tap, bang'.
Presumed rear tyre p*nct*re. Pulled over, lent bike against a garden wall and reached for tyre levers & spare inner tube from small rucksack. Dropped rear wheel out from under mudguard, and inspected tyre for any obvious intrusion.
Found the below damage to the tyre.
Had forgotten to check the rear tyre under the mudguard which was probably reinstalled back in the damp August.
No problem, I'll just walk home in the sunshine ... until a clap of thunder presaged a hailstorm!
I sought refuge under an awning in a pub in Fulmer.
Not all bad news. By the time I got back to TGTI Ruislip, the award winning chippy had started it's Sunday service. Carbfest large portion of chips knocked the edge off any hunger.

Tyre was a GP5000tl run with an inner tube. SportsTracker tells me it gave 6212 miles of riding.

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Damn, that's terminal. We did wait a good while in Artefood until @NorthLondonLight got word that a mechanical had done for your day's ride!

Your absence was noted by the lovely folk at Artefood. One of my riding companions @harman_mogul was disappointed to not be selected to make your acquaintance as he has heard plenty about you and our lockdown riding adventures and wanted to meet the person responsible for improving my cycling.

Heres until the next time and do get that bike sorted out!!!!!!