Headed out late Saturday night, destination
MOTHER... at Wicken Fen. Had to stop half way there and remove the small crud catcher from the front forks as it was rubbing on the tyre. As I left late, I got there late and didn't bed down until 01:00 ish.
Draughty...
Headed off to the visitor centre and the facilities at around 07:00 after a disrupted nights sleep, will be creating a new thread to cover that one. After filling up water bottles etc, I headed off, then got confused about where I was and why the GPS was telling me to go down a footpath. Reality returned when I hit the next village on the main road, where I had to stop and
"fix" my handle bar harness. Mounting it on the tri-bars, in normal orientation, didn't lift it enough to increase the gap and it was buzzing off the tyre every time I hit a bump, which was ridiculously annoying. So I mounted it along the extensions, which worked really well. I shall be doing this in future, but in such a way that the feed bag will sit in-between the extensions, rather to one side.
The byways I was following to start with were horrendous. Piles of building rubble and asbestos (reported to council), burnt out cars (reported to council) and fallen trees (reported to council), were the least of my worries. Un-rideable side to side ankle deep slop, and lined with dog rose, bramble and every bush known to man whose name ends with
-thorn. I may has uttered a few choice words. I nearly turned round and went home at this point.
Glad I didn't, as no sooner was the slop over, than I was treated to some utterly fantastic, arrow straight, hard pack gravel and double track alongside the
Hundred Foot Drain. The sun was out, the howling gale was at my back, I had a huge grin on my face and just wanted it to go on and on.
Obviously it didn't, so I stopped at
WTT Welney for coffee and cake, nice cake it was too. Once at the
Denver Sluice Complex, the plan was for a bit of tarmac, then some bridleways to take me all the to Brandon. In reality, it was a navigation nightmare, with zero signage for any of the bridleways, including one that just didn't appear to exist on the ground at all. Another I had to cycle though what looked like someone's garden, before it ended in a wall of undergrowth, where I had to walk part way round a field, then through a hedge to find what I was supposed to be on. The bridleways were all thrutchity grass affairs as well, really hard going on 700c wheels. So my average speed died a death as I bounced around and fought to keep the bike pointing in the right direction over all the hidden holes and ruts.
I ended up bailing on the bridleways, as the maps were telling me to go through someone house, instead I clambered over a road block and cycled down NCR 30, which looked like it had been involved in an earthquake. The weather was starting to close in, with the occasional rain shower, so I stopped at the BP garage in Brandon for a quick pick me up, then carried on into the
Country Park, where I picked up the Blue Poachers Trail.
Soon enough I was heading South, out of the tree cover and into the heath land, heading for the Icknield Way Trail and the way home. The skies opened and the rain fell, the under wheel conditions deteriorated and I was battling into the wind, starting to get cold and tired. It was a shame, as some of riding was amazing, and I'm really looking forward to going back and doing some of it again when it's dry.
It was nearly four o'clock as I swung into the
Pheonix Cycleworks car park, hoping for a last gasp coffee to warm me up, but the shutters were down. So I wrung out my sodden gloves, ate a Cliff bar, dark some water and headed off for the last ~30 km. I skipped the last few sectors of bridleways, mostly as I know how bad they are when wet and it was now very wet, but also due to my drive chain and brakes making all sorts of nasty grinding noises. When I finally arrived home, the bike was thrown in the shed, my clothes deposited in a pile next to the washing machine and I headed straight for a long hot shower to warm up.
I learned a lot from this outing, which I'll go into a bit more detail in a blog post later in the week. I had a bit of everything on this ride, horrific lows, ecstatic highs, and everything in between. While it would've been nice to have had sun and light winds for the last 60 km, it was a good test of all the kit in some, at times, pretty bad conditions.
Fun breakdown: 50% type 1, 40% type 2, 10% type 3.
Strava:
Distance: 208.47km; Moving time: 10:31:27; Elevation: 709m, plus more photos.
2020 BaM: 3/3
There are theories at the bottom of my jargon.