Category Archives: GPS

bikes, event, GPS, MTB, UK

Bristol Bikefest – Sunday

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When Andy posted on the Combe Raiders page some time ago, I thought doing my first MTB relay solo was a good idea. That was mainly because it was only six hours (on the Sunday, twelve on the Saturday) – not the much more ambitious twelve or twenty-four hours that I’m used to such events being. Saturday was a cracking day – even on Andy’s patio on (almost in) the Avon at dinner time it was 30ºC; thankfully it was a little cooler on race-day.

I really wasn’t all that prepared for such an event – treating it as a normal ride really; at six hours that is about normal now – although this time with almost continuous riding.  But with Andy’s help I managed to ditch my camelbak for the ride and with faith in tubeless, I rode the whole day just carrying a water bottle & hoping no mechanicals would appear – riding so light was quite nice for a change.  The event started with all the first riders (there were also teams & pairs in the six & three hour events) about two kilometres from the start-finish and a few hundred metres down a hill for a chaotic Le Mans start (where you run to your steed & then race from there). Mindful that I had six hours in the saddle ahead & with my general aversion to running – I took it pretty easy & ended up near the back of the field, but there was hill to a start so I could pass people up there easily.

The course turned out to be the most fun course I’ve ever done in such a relay event – with some really nice singletrack, four hills that weren’t killers but enabled passing, and plenty of shade.  So as I’m completely uncompetitive it turned out to be a very fun ride and there wasn’t anything too draining.  There were some nice technical drop-offs that I rode most of the time, but tended to avoid later on when I was trying not to do anything stupid as I tired. With the extra distance at the start I thought I was doing close to forty-minute laps & would comfortably fit in nine laps, but after my first pit stop for a Clif Bar & water top-up I realised I was lapping a lot quicker than that & would probably be able to fit in ten laps if I didn’t blow out.  So that’s what I did; with a bonus third pit stop I finished with about five minutes to spare without any really pain – although a little tired as I paced myself to make sure I finished.  I had some aches in places I wasn’t expecting – upper arms & just below my neck at the top of my back, I’ve never had any biking induced discomfort there before.  Incidentally, I was decidedly mid-field finishing seventeenth out of thirty-one (the winner did twelve) – but mostly pleased with riding ninety-six kilometres/sixty miles offroad with only about ten minutes of stopping.

So a very nice day out on the bike on some well designed singletrack – Andy & Chris also did ten laps between them, finishing a quarter an hour or so before me.  They had done the twelve hour last year, but got a bit bored.  I tend to concur, as fun as the trail was – after about eight consecutive laps it was getting a little boring.  So while it’d be nice to challenge myself & do a twelve or even twenty-four hour solo – I think I’d get too bored going around & around the same course  for such a long time (not too mention I’d actually have to think about preparation, nutrition & other such things in more detail, when all I really want to do is ride).  One of the things I love about riding is exploring places – something a lap-based race doesn’t really encourage.

Unfortunately this post is even more verbose & picture light than normal – this is the only one I have from the day, I didn’t even carry a camera.  The day was topped off nicely by visiting my cousins five minutes down the road, lying on their new lawn (the lawn’s not new, they have recently moved there & didn’t have a lawn before) stretched out in the sun with a beer. I shunned the longer, but quicker, motorway route home & went cross-country home on the A-roads – just stunning in the evening light across the pretty countryside.

bikes, GPS, MTB, UK

en route to Bristol

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Even though I’d entered a six-hour event solo, my first, the following day in Bristol there was no way I was letting a sunny weekend day go to waste. Asked the question, John recommended I go for a ride on the Mendips – I duly found a route to follow and set out early Saturday morning for Somerset.

The wonderfully clear day was once again plagued by a brisk wind, but that was at my back as I immediately hit a 1:10 climb to get up on top of the hills. The bluebells had already started to fade at home in the New Forest, so it was nice to see fields still in bloom. After some pleasant riding in the sun across the ridge top (which was wonderfully dry, but looked like it would be horrible if slightly muddy) there was flattish road and then from a quarry I was hurtled down a rockfest of a descent to Cheddar. It kept going & going and was the best downhill I’d done since Moab.

I pootled up Cheddar Gorge (the only other time I have visited was eighteen-odd months ago with Mum) a little way to see what it was like & decided it was time for tea & cakes – because apparently eleven in the morning is too early to open a kitchen and provide hungry cyclists with an early lunch.

Straight out of Cheddar it was another very steep climb up above the southern edge of the gorge. While there was no one to be seen on the route I took down into Cheddar, this path was very popular with walkers – who all seemed convinced I was mad. After another sublime descent through woods (unfortunately, a bit too much traffic here too) there was rather too much road to link to the last bridleway section. So that was a great introduction to the Mendips – I hope I make it back to ride with the Combe Raiders. Perhaps 840 metres of climbing was a bit more than I should have done – but the following day would let me know.

With a few hours to kill before Andy was home (the one I have to thank for the whole Bikefest idea & whose house I was staying at that night), I thought there were worse things I could do than go into Bath. So I continued the drive in the sun, parked up at the same Park & Ride where I also went with Mum & rode the bus into yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. As Mum & I had already visited the Roman Baths, I had a very nice afternoon wandering around in the sun looking at the old buildings, lounging in parks & eating delicious Italian cake.

around home, bikes, GPS, MTB, UK

Isle of Wight day ride

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It’s been one of those uncommon weekends at home – & more surprisingly, it coincided with some very nice early June weather. With no plans & wanting to see, before next weekend, if I could manage six hours of riding off-road in a day, it was the perfect time to finally head back to the Isle of Wight. This was my fourth visit to the island – strangely, the first in the eighteen months that I’ve been living just a few miles away across the Solent. On Garmin Connect,I found a rather optimistic looking, for me, almost-ninety kilometre course from an enduro MTB event that ran the week before; of course I could hardly drive to the ferry in Lymington – so that added another thirty-odd kilometres return.

I woke perhaps a little later than I normally do on a Saturday, but was quickly out the door by nine o’clock – I must have just missed a ferry so had to wait about thirty minutes for the next one. By about eleven I was in Yarmouth & it was heaving with some sort of carnival – that should have been predictable considering how packed the ferry was. But all the tasty food stalls couldn’t tempt me as I was reckoning on being back to catch a return ferry at about six o’clock. The first bit of the course followed a very flat causeway up alongside the delightfully named Yar – the number of Rs you add is in direct proportion to how piratyrannical you are feeling.

Soon I was climbing through a golf course onto the chalk downs – very nice it was too with great views in all directions (only spoiled by the Calshot power station stack & the Fawley refinery – both pretty close to home). The ride to begin with was mostly bridleways linked by small pieces of road – not the most exciting mountain-biking, but that wasn’t what I was really after. It was a very pleasant day out in the sun, with a brisk wind, and unlike the mainland there were very few people about. About two-thirds into the course I started to get a little tired, so the food stops got a little more frequent.

One of the nice things about riding on the island is that you don’t have to go very far for the views to change significantly. Also, unlike the Forest, there are hills – which are much more interesting than no hills. On the return from the furtherest point and closing the second & third loops (the course was vaguely a stick to start with, then three loops stacked on top of it) it started to become sealed lanes connected with bridleways – which I was OK with. Luckily I brought about half my normal lunch, as it’s more sparsely populated over there and pubs for mid-ride meals were a bit harder to find.

I ate much less on such a ride than I expected I would, so was pleased to stumble over a donkey sanctuary (whoever had heard of such a thing?) down a bridleway that had a small cafe with rather nice cakes in it (the carrot cake was saved for later & won out over the yoghurt & lemon flapjack). Of course, just after that I found a very quaint village with pubs – but I was still on track for six o’clock, so pushed on. All the singlespeeding recently has given more feasible options for getting up hills when one is tired – so that was helpful as there were still a couple of climbs to get up before the long descent back to Yarmouth to roll straight on to a ferry.

Back home by eight o’clock – that was a great outing where I could pace myself as I wanted and after which I was not nearly as sore as I should have been. Looking back through the riding diary, that’s the most distance on a single day I’ve ever put in on a mountain-bike (it was mostly off-road) & the second highest total climbing since I got my GPS two years ago (not even close to Alex’s climbfest of summer 2011) . I hope such large rides continue for the next few months every so often, otherwise the RVO will destroy me.

Monument & follies appear in the strangest places in the UK – this wasn’t even at the top of a hill.

The problem with such a long route on bridleways is the scores/hundreds of gates one must open & close – this set appearing suddenly out of nowhere were a little more over the top than most.

bikes, combe raiders, GPS, MTB, UK

Long Mynd & Shropshire riding

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Last time the Combe Raiders went to Shropshire to ride Long Mynd I was nearing the end of my time off the bike recovering from shoulder surgery & also, quite possibly, in New Zealand. Either way I didn’t make it to what was apparently a good riding weekend away. So when John sent out an invite for riding Long Mynd & perhaps more over the last May long weekend, I was tempted. After having worked out that Long Mynd is close to another place, Ironbridge, that I’ve been meaning to visit for some years it was easily to justify a solo drive in holiday weekend traffic & three nights away (thankfully airbnb kept the costs down yet again).

Somewhat unusually for a long weekend, the weather was beautiful on Saturday as we met at a local bike shop & campground – Rich had driven over from Oxfordshire that morning to join in the riding fun. Long Mynd basically means long mountain; while not much of a mountain really, more of a hill topping out at just over five hundred metres – it is comparatively long. We basically found different ways to ride to the top of the Mynd and took different routes down. I’d been advised to bring a bike with gears for a change – with some good climbs I was glad I had, even if the squealing brakes were somewhat annoying & I didn’t have complete faith in them.

We got some good miles in & with only three of the Combe Raiders (& some of the faster ones at that), there was a lot less stopping than with a larger group.  It was nice to be around hills & the scenery was superb – quite pastoral and green of course.  While not technically challenging, the downhills were long, fast & good fun.  Considering the long weekend & the surprising weather – we were lucky enough not to come across too many walkers as we blasted down the edge of the hill.  An impromptu lunch stop up on top turned into lazy basking in the sun sprawled over the heather.

All weekend I saw many vivid yellow fields.

John – also opted for ‘spensions & gears.

Before we headed up to the ridge for the last time we met John’s family and in-laws at Carding Mill Valley.  While the twins generally ran around in the sun, it was time for cake.  Unusually, there was not a single pub stop on either of the weekend’s rides – but I did manage to eat an inordinate amount of cake.  The last climb up was easily the worst – long & with little traction on the steep parts, there were multiple sections to be walked briefly.  An ace day topped off with entertaining the twins and a barbecue on the lawn of the big country house (of which the others were staying in an apartment of – not an empty country house that we’d found to have a barbecue at).

Just as I was about to leave after convincingly winning at cards (who says lunch times are wasted?), a plan to ride the next evening was hatched. So after a full Sunday, I was driving back to Hopesay where the plan was to ride around bridleways that John had picked off the map.

The only problem with picking random bridleways off OS maps is that you can’t really be sure if they are worth riding. The first few miles off road were a little difficult – route-finding was tricky & there were some overgrown paths. But we managed OK & the ride improved as the light disappeared – we didn’t set off until well after six o’clock.  It was still very pretty countryside (more yellow fields) and we got enough climbing and miles in to make it worthwhile.

After riding around Wenlock Edge (one of the the things about this place is the wonderful names: Much Wenlock, Homer, Mogg Forest, Monkhopton, Diddlebury, Ticklerton to name too many), we dipped down into the valley & up the other side.  We were supposed to bypass the summit, but for some time we’d been roughly circling an unidentified (to us) tower.  I couldn’t resist, so after a rather brutal climb we were at Flounders’ Folly.  Unfortunately we’d missed one of the few days it is open by five or so hours, so couldn’t get a slightly higher view of the surrounding countryside.  With one last downhill we headed for the road, donned lights & headed back to pie for dessert.

Flounders’ Folly – very difficult to fit in the frame if one is not inclined to fall off the edge of the hill.

Looking back to Wenlock Edge