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List:
- Oliver Schick
- Fussball
- Oliver Schick
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Get on the list, then, guys--it's buried after fussballclub's c&p of the OP ... :)
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I think I'm sold...have to check diary.
- Oliver Schick
- Fussball
- Fussball
- braker
- spybot
I may be going on a little training ride out of london next week (on holiday) if anyone else wants to prepare for some hills on fixed...
- Oliver Schick
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Seriously like the look of this ride.
Doing my 2nd Dunwich this year then will let you know if i'm up for this ride.
May even do it Singlespeed 48 x 16....hopefully a good ratio if not Geared.I'd really recommend dropping the ratio, Nigel. One person did get up Ditchling Beacon on 48/16, but I really don't think that's a good idea. Go for around 70gi instead.
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A wonderfully perverse route Oliver.
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Nice looking ride Oliver and diary looks good at the moment. Happy to backstop
Fantastic, Des, thanks! It'll be brilliant to have you on the ride.
I'm also plotting a recce if you're free sometime before. :)
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provisionally in....
Mr Shick it would be a pleasure and an honor to ride through the night again.GH2 might be ready by then too so i could act as medic/ tool carrier.
Indeed it would! Hope you'll be able to make it!
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2010-08-07 10pm Hyde Park Corner - Overnight to Brighton "Triple Crown"
- Oliver Schick
- Fussball
- braker
- spybot
- 3stripe
- balmain
- D. Generate
I could be up for a recce as well.
- Oliver Schick
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Recce will most likely have to be weekday and daytime, as I have no week-end time available until the ride date.
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About
2010-08-07 10pm Hyde Park Corner - Overnight to Brighton "Triple Crown"
Posted by
@Oliver Schick
*** Please read all of this long OP if you want to come on the ride. It's worth it! ***
I feel a bit of a ride coming on. I've been off the bike for months and I'm raring to go!
This one is going to be different from the overnighters of last year. It will be longer (140km maximum option, with a 100km option) and will be hillier.
We will meet at 10pm at Hyde Park Corner on Saturday the 7th August, 2010.
We will use the route of the March 2009 ride (http://www.lfgss.com/thread17746.html) to get to Shoreham-by-Sea in the first instance. This is approximately 95km, with one major hill (Portnalls Road) and a couple of small ones. We'll start by taking part of the Friday Night Ride to the Coast route, going out via Chelsea Bridge, Battersea, Clapham Common, Tooting, Mitcham, lanes to Reigate Hill (fast downhill) and Reigate. From there, we'll diverge, along nice country lanes to Leigh and Charlwood, Faygate, Mannings Heath, Monk's Gate, Nuthurst, Maplehurst, Partridge Green, Henfield, Upper Beeding, and Shoreham. I really like this route. It doesn't take the classic route down via Turner's Hill but goes west of Gatwick and just east of Horsham through beautiful wooded countryside.
At Shoreham, we will watch the sun rise over Brighton's hills from Shoreham breakwater. This is probably going to be chilly even in August. The view is worth it, though.
The main restriction on this part of the ride is that there will probably be no opportunity for a halfway stop. If anyone really needs to stop, e.g. to buy food, we'll be able to divert to a petrol station at Gatwick Airport, but this will mean approximately 10km extra. Owen's Brighton ride was let into Gatwick North Terminal recently, but probably only because a lot of people wanted to take the train and because they'd been soaked. So please make sure that you have enough food for the whole ride with you from the start. This need not be much, depending on how fit you are, but you'll get pretty hungry during the night. See tips on food and drink further down.
We'll then continue along the coast road towards Portslade-by-Sea, where we'll turn left to go up Devil's Dyke from the landward side. Yes, away from Brighton. From Devil's Dyke, we'll drop down towards Clayton, crossing the A23 Brighton Road by a small bridge, and go up Clayton Hill, again from the landward side, the most easily-graded of the three climbs into Brighton. At Clayton, we will ride west to Ditchling, to tackle, finally, Ditchling Beacon. This makes approximately 136km (about 85 miles).
Any idea yet why this is called 'Triple Crown'? :)
The beauty of this ride is that anyone who doesn't fancy an additional extremely hilly last 40km can just carry on along the coast road to Brighton, which is only about another 4km or so from the point where we turn off towards Devil's Dyke. You'll get to the beach a lot earlier.
The route:
http://www.bikemap.net/route/589729?127904108438977#lat=50.84302&lng=-0.28788&zoom=13&type=1
THIS RIDE WAITS FOR EVERYONE. It's a good opportunity to sample your first taste of night riding. Don't be shy about joining in even if you're slow. Night riding is to be enjoyed and savoured, not rushed through.
Please make sure that you're well-prepared, especially if you've never done a night ride before. Your bike should be in excellent working order, so that we won't suffer too many mechanicals on the way. This could be quite a large group, and if you have a bike failure, you might keep a lot of people waiting.
You should have tools and spares with you, especially a spare inner tube or two.
Check your tyres before riding, e.g. for embedded glass or flints, and replace them if they're too worn--a night ride is a pretty good opportunity to have more of an incentive to do that than normally. Bring one or two spare inner tubes for your tyre size, especially if you have an unusual tyre size, like 27s. Prepare to quickly change the inner tube to get over a puncture rather than trying to patch the inner tube. We'll get going again more quickly this way.
Take good lights. In practice, there'll be quite a few people on the ride with the equivalent of car headlights, but you could find yourself in a smaller group off the back or descending with some distance between riders. You don't need to go overboard on this--a lot of people do these days, but lighting is now so good that quite a large range of lights will do. Plenty of threads around, so UTFS.
Other riders may be able to give you mechanical assistance, but don't rely on it, especially concerning spares.
If you have a ride-ending mechanical, we'll make sure that you're sorted for advice on how to get home and a taxi before we carry on.
If you need to bail out, there are various train stations in easy reach along the way (e.g., Reigate, Gatwick, Horsham) and trains from Brighton start very early, long before we're due to arrive, whether you take the 100k or 140k option. As mentioned above, you can easily cut out the final loop north of Brighton if you're not feeling up to it.
Take some savoury **food **(sandwiches or samosas or something like that) and sickly sweet energy food like Go Bars or flapjacks, and keep drinking and eating in small sips and morsels during the ride. You can also take an energy gel, but you should only use that towards the end of the ride and if you're really struggling. Try not to stuff your face too much in one go, as you'll need less food than you think, but pack some more food for the remainder of the ride. Take at least two bidons with water or whichever **drinks **mixture you favour, but at least one bottle with water only is recommended.
We will stop regularly to make sure everybody catches up, and there will be backstops to make sure that we don't lose anyone. The backstops are the last riders on the road.
On Brighton rides last year, everybody was very well-prepared. On the June ride, with over 40 people, we only had one mechanical stop (swapping pedals between two bikes, too complicated to explain why) and two puncture stops--only two puncture stops in a group of 40+ is very good indeed. Let's see if we can go without one on this ride!
There are a few hills--notably Portnalls Road (goes on for a lot longer than you realise at first), Reigate Hill is a fast downhill but quite easy to ride on fixed, as it's a well-built A-road at that point--just watch out for some nasty potholes at the bottom, which I hope they will have fixed by now! There are a number of smaller climbs between Reigate and Horsham, but no climb into Shoreham--the road runs along the River Adur. Then there are the aforementioned Devil's Dyke, Clayton Hill, and Ditchling Beacon. There's no shame in walking up Devil's Dyke or Ditchling Beacon, which at night is easily possible, as there'll be next to no motor traffic.
This is a **longer overnighter **than previous ones. The standard Brighton ride is only about 50-60 miles. This is 85 all in, but you can cut the distance. The first time around, it'll seem a lot longer to you than if you've done it a few times, but the magic of a night ride doesn't really disappear. Ever.
Barring excessive numbers of punctures, we should see the sunrise, probably shortly before 5am, as we're approaching the coast. This will be a fairly moonless night (night ride etiquette sometimes stipulates doing it on full moon nights, but the FNRttC already do that every month, so I'm not too fussed about that--moonless nights can be great, too).
This is a good opportunity to round off the summer with a classic ride.
Backstop. We will need a volunteer to be the backstop. This isn't a particularly arduous job and simply involves being the last rider on the road, so that we know we're complete when you arrive. If someone has a puncture near the back, the front of the ride may not notice, and you should then be in phone contact with the front to alert us that we have to stop. This is a worthy and essential job and the reward will be a free breakfast in Brighton. So get in there and snap it up!
Gear inches. This route is doable on fixed, and you should be absolutely fine at around 70 gear inches. Not everybody can get up Devil's Dyke or Ditchling Beacon on 70gi, but it's a small part of the route. I'll be geared and I know I'll still struggle on both climbs.
Useful links--please have a look at these:
Route here:
[ame="http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Brighton-Route-used-on-LFGSS-Brighton-overnight-rides-2009"]http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path...ght-rides-2009[/ame
%22%5Dhttp://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path...ght-rides-2009%5B/ame]Southwark Cyclists' Dunwich FAQ, with good advice on night riding:
http://southwarkcyclists.org.uk/content/dunwich-dynamo
Right, I'm so going to regret putting those extra climbs in, but I'm really looking forward to regretting it.
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