Tell us about your weekend ride

Oh, @7VEN awesome run. Well impressed.
And important cake information, Best at Yarmouth school, still warm from oven toffee sponge, and lemon drizzle, moar cake

Had perfect conditions all the way to Cambridge today, good company, lovely wether and a wholly inappropriate bike.

Really good fun but I need to buy some decent summer gloves, palms are killing me from the quite harsh grips.

For some reason the garmin stopped recording 3/4 of the way in.

http://www.strava.com/activities/137861600

Went for a ride with Emma Pooley

http://app.strava.com/activities/136958647
http://app.strava.com/activities/137825237
http://app.strava.com/activities/137825172

Jesus upstart,
Average speed is impressive.
Kudos to you!

A century with <3000ft of climbing? I need to move to Norfolk.

^ this - it's ridiculously easy to ride fast there

Scenic, too

Nice post Upstart, now we are getting some high calibre weekend rides ;)

My bike decided to do this when I was about 30 miles from home on Sat. What a great fucking day. On the plus side an extremley nice bloke gave me and bike a lift most of way back.

Me on my Venom and the missus on her Gazelle went on the wheel-tracks of Jack's Escape to Cookham Island (http://lostlanes.thebikeshow.net/routes/16EC/) and added a few miles on top of that.
We started on Sunday from Twickenham and went to Brentford Lock from where we jumped alongside the Grand Union Canal all the way to the 'start' of Jack's ride.\
From there we went to Cookham Island following his tracks and then we went back to Slough (via 'normal' road) to take a train to Ealing for a well deserved pizza at Santa Maria with some friends.
After being fully fed and enjoyed the evening with friends we hopped back on the now hurting saddle and head home in Twickenham for a nice hot shower and rest.

The following day we jumped on a train to Windsor and Eaton Riverside from where we rode via Sustran route 4 to Maidenhead and from there we followed the nice Green Way to Cookham (which, at one point, follows Route 50 which put us back on Jack's track we did the day before).
A stop for tea at Cookham and then we continued Jack's ride. We (not so) shamely pushed our bikes up the hill (it was hard even on foot!) and off we went thru the forest (lovely, although mainly on roads, some of which quite fast, but many of them very slow) and up and down a few hills (we had to push the bikes on a second steep one) until we reached the end of the ride in Slough, but we continued on Route 461 to Eton from where we crossed the river to reach the train station.
Hopped on the train back home from there.

Overall a very nice two-days ride, enjoyed the mostly traffic free ride and the amazing work Sustran is doing and has on the cycle network (albeit massively missing on proper commuter routes in and around cities.)

A few pictures:

Cookham Lock

Along the Jubille river

The Gazelle

The Venom loaded (who said racing cycles aren't good for touring?)

A few more here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/anidel/sets/72157644128678429/

Just a short trip out Victoria Park,Olympic Park then a couple of Beers and Pizza at Crate Brewery which we'd seen the seen the weekend before, reasonably early there table by the river...Goodtimes.

clocked my longest fixed ride to date (200km). a fair old shlep with no gears!

clocked my longest fixed ride to date (200km). a fair old shlep with no gears!

Respect.

Whilst not strictly the weekend (bank holiday Monday), I decided to see if I could follow on from my Sunday ride with another 150km + ride (my first attempt and doing long rides back to back for LEJOG base training miles).
The girlfriend suggested that we go to Great Shelford for a pub lunch and back.
Failed at getting up early as hadn't been till bed until late on the Sunday.
Finally left home at 8.30am.
Hadn't even got through the Greenwich foot tunnel before Emma unavoidably rode through some glass on the road and punctured (anyone else notice that there always seems to be tons of broken bottles and pint glasses on the road after bank holidays).
Fortunately, the ride there was uneventful as it's a route that I've done many times before.
Being the first time I'd done back to back long days in the saddle, I found it interesting how my body coped.
I had a normal breakfast but only managed to make it to one of the services in Epping before my body told me it needed more fuel. It didn't want one of those shitty High-5 energy bars I was carrying, it needed SANDWICHES.
There were no sandwiches however so I scoffed one and a half minging sausage rolls (the other half is still in the bottom of my pannier) and a snickers down. I normally drink the High-5 2:1 fructose drink but my body seemed repulsed by it and just ended up drinking water.
Good lessons learnt for LEJOG.
Had an amazing lunch at a pub called the Square and Compasses in Great Shelford before setting off home.
It's obvious that the councils are making an effort to fill in the pot holes before the TDF rolls through as they've done some great work filling them in.
Anyone up for a weekend ride soon riding stage 3 in reverse?

http://www.strava.com/activities/137859155

would definitely be interested in the reverse stage 3

I skipped the Sunday club run to head into Kent. Most of my riding there involves a fair chunk of climbing, but I did a route with some good flat bits too. I'm no climber, so it's nice to be able to get in the drops for a bit and power on. Anyway, a lovely route on a lovely sunny day.

https://www.strava.com/activities/137238665

still one of the best threads on the forum this.

did hardly any riding over the weekend though was on some lesser known lanes in the knatts valley area so plenty of humps to navigate.

would definitely be interested in the reverse stage 3

this

Had perfect conditions all the way to Cambridge today, good company, lovely wether and a wholly inappropriate bike.

Really good fun but I need to buy some decent summer gloves, palms are killing me from the quite harsh grips.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t1.0-9/10170870_10154162316150151_5914044808388339835_n.jpg

For some reason the garmin stopped recording 3/4 of the way in.

http://www.strava.com/activities/137861600

Mine didn't

http://www.strava.com/activities/137847040

+1 to a rad day out, perfect conditions. really had a blast.

Am I allowed to report on a ride I've not yet started?

My first weekend ride is down to Brighton via Faygate, my first FNRttC in ages and I don't care if it rains half the night. Same sort of distance as last weekend's blissful IoW Randonnee but it'll be a very different beast, the first half of the ride in the dead of night, lots of stopping and hanging around and, alas, no pub quiz afterwards to fund our lavish breakfast.

"Am I allowed to report on a ride I've not yet started? "
no, no soup for you.

To celebrate the start of the Giro I thought I'd string together some local hills whilst meatballs in tom sauce simmered down. Spaghetti and meatHILLS.

^ Cheltenham's my home town. I rode back for Easter to see my ma who's in Fairview. I always forget how relentless the Cotswold bumps are and had to stop for emergency coca cola in winchcombe to help me over cleeve hill at the end.

I'm hoping to do a few more trips this summer with the bike and will shout to see if there's a Sunday club run to jump on one time.

Certainly do that.

still one of the best threads on the forum this.

^absolutely right. I haven't ridden much at all over the last few months, as I've been busy on weekends preparing for a professional exam. This is one of the threads that helped keep me motivated.