Iford Manor, Britannia on the Bridge.

I missed out on getting a VIP pass to the prologue of the Tour de France by a brake-cable’s width. I was due to go as part of a company hospitality package given to a friend by another company who he does business with. Unfortunately, the company giving out the tickets decided to cut the allocation and cancel the hospitality. Needless to say this left my friend in the very embarrassing position of having to tell me that the amazing lig he had invited me on had been pulled. Of course I was gutted, but it was after all a freebie and it wasn’t my friend’s fault at all. He now feels terrible about it, but he really shouldn’t, this sort of thing happens and it’s just rotten luck. Many, many thanks to him for inviting me on it in the first place.

As it happened though, two things happened on the same day I got the news I wasn’t going to Le Tour that cheered me up no end and made me forget all about it. Firstly my eldest son’s joint birthday party, shared with two of his chums hitting the big zero five in the same week, we held it at Longleat after hours. An amazing time was had by all, after playing in the adventure castle and getting a soaking in the water fountains, we all picnicked on the lawn at the side of Longleat House. The weather had been filthy all week and in fact it was raining on Friday morning, but by the afternoon the sky was blue and dotted with beautiful fluffy white cumulus clouds. Crucially the temperature was warm enough to feel like late June and it was a splendid event.

The second thing was a terrific ride I took out on a loop to Iford Manor. Two weeks ago I took my mother and my youngest son there during the day to look around the garden. The road down into the valley is on a 17% gradient and it is seriously narrow. So narrow that I thought our standard size family estate was going to scrape the sides and my mum was on the verge of a panic attack due to the complete lack of passing spaces. We took the road out of the valley up the other side, it turned out to be narrower and around the same level of steepness. I thought to myself, I’ve got to ride it.

So Friday evening, the children being asleep and the sun still well above the horizon at 2030 I gave it a go. Nice and easy on the route to the hill down to Iford, racking up speeds of 27mph on the flat with the breeze behind me. Then the hill down itself. It Was Scary! More scary than in a car. having the brakes full on didn’t really seem to slow me down (must give them a good looking over), I’m sure I was slowed, it just didn’t feel like it. Flanked on both sides by a wall with no kerb there was simply nowhere to go if anyone was trying to rant up in a car in the other direction. To make things just a little more tricky, the tarmac was covered with chippings and stones, most of which appeared to have fallen from the crumbling masonry or been gouged out by pointy bits of car. Arriving at the bottom is a fantastic experience, the rider explodes out of the hill onto a junction with no road markings. To the right stands the magnificent Iford Manor. The house is mediaeval in origin, the classical façade having been added in the 18th century when the hanging woodlands above the garden were planted. It’s the site of the internationally reknowned Peto Gardens, built in the early part of the twentieth century by Harold Ainsworth Peto. He collected a great many artefacts from around the world in his travels, from fourteenth century bas-reliefs from Italian churches to statues of snarling hounds from Germany and stone lanterns from Japan. All of these are featured in the garden which is well worth a visit. Also the housekeeper’s tea-rooms do the most AMAZING scones with jam and cream.
I digress, leaving myself standing impatiently with one foot on the pedal, the other poised on tiptoe just touching the gravel strewn tarmac. So, straight ahead is a road that goes I know not where, meandering off into light woodland, stone wall one one side, fence on the other. Leaving only the road to the left. This climbs out of the tiny valley, crawling up through the countryside until it eventually joins up with the A36, but before the hill starts there is a wonderful old bridge, capped with an imperious statue of Britannia which glares down at the waters of the river Frome.

The road towards the A36 quickly gets steep and narrow. So narrow was it, that although I was cycling in the middle of the road, my shoulder was stung by a nettle on the bank. Once again my front derallieur failed to find the granny ring so I thought I would try and stand on the peddles and take it in the middle ring. I got about two hundred yards then I experienced something that has never happened to me on a bike before, as the road got suddenly steeper the bike simply stopped. I just didn’t have any forward momentum, it wasn’t like it got hard then ground to a halt, it just stopped. Foot down, telltale oily print from the outer chainring on the inner calf of my right leg. This is a shameful brand, the mark of the beginner who must get off the bike to walk up hills. Well I wasn’t going to walk up the hill. I leant over and popped the chain onto the inner chainring, the so-called ‘granny ring’. With the bike in its lowest gear I set off again, just about getting enough speed up to enable me to slip my foot into the straps. Near wheelying with the force I was putting in, I crawled up the hill, my breathing speeding up, but not quite getting to the panting stage. After a quarter of a mile it started to get easier as the road began to wander off from side to side during it’s ascent of the hill, the climb was becoming quite pleasant. Soon an angry buzzing sound filled the air, accompanied by an oddly acidic smell, faintly redolent of sulphur, the A36, still busy with traffic from Bath even at nine in the evening. In comparison to the gentle arcadian tranquility of Iford, the road seemed perverse and utterly unlovely, though to be truthful, Iford is as much a product of humanity shaping the landscape as the main road I was now hurtling down. I hadn’t ridden this stretch since last year when I first bought the Lemond Etape. My first ride from Farleigh Hungerford and back along the A36 had been painful, necessitating frequent stops as a double stitch burned my sides leaving me hardly able to turn the cranks. It was an ignoble and sobering ride that had left me feeling awful and despairing of ever being able to ride in the same manner I had barely ten years before. Now, less than a year later, I am three quarters of a stone lighter, the stretch seemed comically easy and a stitch, even a double one, is something that can be ridden through. It was uplifting to be riding back to the village, feeling that progress in gaining fitness and losing fatness was being accomplished in such a small space of time. I hope this comes as some encouragement to anyone reading this who has perhaps started cycling again and fears they have a long way to go before feeling like they can ride comfortably fast and get fit.

I get a lot of hits at this blog from people looking for average bike speeds and I assume they are just getting into riding a bicycle, maybe they are a bit discouraged that they are only hitting 12-14mph on their rides. Just keep going, remember Eddy Merckx, who I consider to be the greatest racing cyclist ever, said the way to get better at riding your bike, is to ride your bike. I promise if you keep riding, you will get better, faster, fitter, thinner.

Ride like the wind; Be home for tea

I rode it up to the top of the hill and I rode it down again x10

As I type this, the air outside is nearly still, but at 2000 hrs today the wind was blowing hard enough to send small twigs and branches skittering down onto the road. Inspired by Jez who wrote about going for a run on his blog I decided to get in a few Hill-Circuits. In his blog post, he quite rightly (in my opinion) rants about spinning, the intensive exercise bike training. I went on a sponsored ride once with some team members who thought they could build up cycle strength by ’spinning’, they had done weeks of intensive sessions at the gym, but when it came to the crunch they fell apart. You get no wind resistance in the gym, how can you prepare for a big bike ride without confronting the biggest enemy of the cyclist who wants to go at speed? Above 14mph you are losing power as you expend energy trying to overcome the barrier, you yourself create, to pushing the bike forward; namely your own wind resistance as the shape of your body smacks into the air you are attempting to move through. You will get fit travelling over 14mph on your bike on a regular basis, I guarantee it! I get a lot of hits to this site from people who have been searching for the average speed you should be going on a bike. I’m going to build a separate page soon to cover that question as there are so many variables. What I will say now is that if you can keep your average speed above 14-15mph over around ten miles of variable terrain (and I’m talking road riding here really, but if you can find a nice track like the Ridgeway in Wiltshire then you could do that on a Mountainbike offroad for ten miles too) then you are not only ’spinning’ the cranks, driving you forward and giving you some nice exercise, but at that speed and above you are fighting enough wind resistance to give you a really good workout. It will also be better, more fun and a damn site cheaper than hitting the gym on a regular basis.

Anyhoo, the wind was blowing UP the hill so that was a good enough incentive to actually get out and ride. I managed ten circuits and was a bit amazed to discover that was about 4 miles or so. Varying the pace going up the hill seemed to work well, I could ascend out of the saddle easily at 10mph. 14mph meant I was gasping by the time I reached the top and the final ascent at 16mph nearly did me in. I took two circuits at 9mph sitting down in lower gears, and after a fast ascent I freewheeled on the descent to get some rest or take on water. Here’s a satellite picture of the circuit for your viewing pleasure:

The hill runs upwards left to right, I ascended on the bottom road and went down on the top road. After circuit ten I raced off down past The Mill onto the freshly relaid link road. What a contrast from my ride down the same route of a few days ago. For much of the way I was stood on the pedals battling against a brutal headwind and a light spattering of rain. Then left at Woolverton onto the main road and round the outside of the village again. By the time I hit the Beckington roundabout I was blown and not just by the wind. Funny things happen to your mind as you start to experience the bonk like “which button changes my gears again?”, luckily I recognised the signs of fast plummeting blood-sugar and was able to slip down a few gears and just trundle back slowly, conserving as much energy as possible. I made it back just as the cars were putting on their headlights.

Finally here is my regime for getting fit on the bike: Eat less; Ride more. That’s it.

Sore Legs and Smithfield Nocturne

Ooh my aching legs! That John Hayes, all the technical blazing through mud, up and down sheer grass slopes and over rubble has taken it’s toll on my pins. Definitely an exercise rest day today then.

It looks like the Smithfield Nocturne was a great success despite the rain and, apparently, a totally chaotic messenger race. See some footage from the BBC here or check out the Le Mans style start of the folding bike/commuter race below.

…and off they go…

Tuesday Ride III – John’s Revenge, aka: Mud, Sweat and Gears

The Tuesday ride this week was a Mountainbike special. John wanted to take Rob Bunce and myself around some local trails, so I headed out to Westbury at 1910 and got the wrong carpark as the meeting point. By the time I found John and Rob I was pretty knackered and a little hungry, having only eaten a banana and drank a cup of ultra-strong coffee. Needless to say, Rob guarded his Crunchie, the only food between us, with great care. John led us up through Westbury to where the road suddenly turned into a muddy off-road trail. In the woods we found something pretty cool. A whole bunch of kids had spent ages making an amazing series of jumps and half-pipes, a secret BMX course carved out of the forest floor, this was a serious investment of time. In fact there were two kids there, they proceeded to show us up by jumping and racing around us, we poor fogies were left slipping and sliding through the mud in their wake. Then John showed us a, quite frankly, brown-trouser inducing drop off, it was near vertical and for one terrifying moment I thought he was going to take us down it. Thankfully it was decreed to be too muddy, phew!

We spent a while sliding through the woods trying to locate the track, ditching the kids in the process (or maybe they ditched us, probably the latter). Rob and I thought we’d found the trail leading down the edge of a field, but it turned out to be blocked by barbed wire. We could hear John on the other side merrily cycling along so we struggled through the wire and brambles carrying our bikes to join our leader. The way was muddy, rocky, rutty and errr more muddy, very hard going though not for John. We joined up with the road that leads upward to the white horse, paused for a group photo (above), then picked our way through the oncoming stream of chavs in souped-up cars towards the white horse. If people only knew that cyclists can’t actually make out what people shout at us through their open windows I suspect they wouldn’t bother. Having said that it’s probably for the benefit of their passengers who, I assume, are equally imbecilic. Guffawing at the witty abuse hurled our way by the driver when all we can hear is:
“VRRROOOOOMaaAAYAAAMMOOOOooooom!”
Anyway we crawled up the hill, actually I really enjoyed that bit and kept freewheeling back to get a bit more climbing in, until we reached the point where the track divided and turned into gravel. The views by the old chalk quarry were fantastic. A low blanket of cloud had enveloped the sun as it began its descent, but there was still a clear strip of sky above Trowbridge and Westbury. Golden highlights danced over the cornfields as the wheat swayed slowly in the breeze. Despite, or maybe because of the climb we all felt in great spirits as we raced down the track towards Upton Scudamore. We were accosted by a pack of weird, very hairy terriers. As we saw them approaching in the distance Rob thought they were pigs, but the yapping and over-excited bouding betrayed them as mutts. Quickly we adopted loose formation, an arrow shape with John in front and Rob and I flanking, just to make it harder for them to pick us off. As it happened they were friendly and the owners, who eventually meandered over the horizon, were very apologetic for the yapping. By a very scary sign (Military Firing Range, KEEP OUT), John stopped to brief us on the downhill and drop-off he was about to take us down.

I was feeling pretty nervous, especially as John had said “it’s not too bad and there is a point were you can bail out before the drop off”. John went first, alarming us with his speed of attack, and I followed. It started off easily although it was fast and I was quickly locked into a tractor rut. I was just wondering where the drop off actually was, when suddenly… sh*t! I was over the lip with no chance to stop. The cranks were level and I slid back off the saddle as the bars followed the front wheel into thin air. Panic lasted but a moment and I had the presence of mind to choose my line out of the drop, hoping the left hand rut was the correct one and that it wouldn’t collapse into a hole or something. John had already got up the other side of the hill and I cycled, then walked up to join him. Someone was laughing and it turned out to be me, elated by the rush of speed and the fact that I had done something that, if I’m honest, I was quite nervous about doing. We watched Rob pick his way down. He got off at the drop-off, but then got back on again to finish up on the lead-out, good man. Through the gate at the top of the field with Rob’s bike bell tinging happily on an overhanging branch, then we rode out along a hugely puddly, rubble strewn track. The lack of mudguards meant that my bum was soaked and freezing by the time we hit the road at Upton Scudamore.

The sunlight was dying into embers behind the horizon as we sped along the main road into Westbury, exchanging waves with a Roadie as he passed us on his way out. We said our goodbyes at a handy junction, Rob’s bell tinging into the distance behind me as I raised a clenched fist in solidarity, then turned for Dilton Marsh and home.

Of Hill Circuits and Fresh Tarmac

Disaster, in the form of only one lolly in the freezer and two children wanting to eat it, was averted today with a quick scoot over to the local garage and a rummage in their chest freezer. A bit of a sprint but it wasn’t going to do for the day’s cycling by any stretch of the imagination. I had a bit of a sniffly cold and a headache, but careful ingestion of Lemsip was keeping the symptoms at bay (apart from a grumpy mood). After the sprogs had finally been dragged in from the garden, bathed, read to and put to bed I pulled the racer out of the workshop and changed into my cycling gear. As I wasn’t feeling so good I didn’t want to go too far, and in any case, I hadn’t had my tea yet (I didn’t want to suffer ‘the bonk’ any more than a couple of miles from home). As it happens there is a hill in the village which has two roads running parallel from base to crest. One of them is residential, the other skirts the outer edge of the houses and they are linked at the top and bottom, I thought it would make a nice circuit. It seemed sensible to cycle up the residential road and down the country road, they are both 30mph limits, but that way I wouldn’t have to cross any oncoming traffic as I would always be turning left. It’s a reasonable hill, not too steep, but fairly even, a sprint up it feels tiring by the time I reach the top and there’s just enough space on the downhill to hit 32mph before having to brake hard enough to make the left turn without ending up on the wrong side of the road. A left by the Green and a very tight turn back up the hill just where it starts to get steeper add a bit of interest.

I did five circuits before carrying on down the hill and out of the village into the dusk, along some freshly laid tarmac barely a few days old. For two weeks the route had been closed to traffic as work took place, the new road felt good to ride. With no traffic around I powered through the half-light sustaining 26mph for a mile or so before turning back. Where there had been wheel-eating potholes less than a fortnight before, there now lay a utopian cycling surface, gleaming, black and unworn. The day’s storms had left a rich, damp road-smell, heady and pleasing when mixed with the scent of rain-gorged roadside grass. Only the faintest hint of a breeze stirred the air and the warm-up on the hill had left my legs feeling strong. It seemed to me that my cold and headache had been left behind somewhere on the short ride, unable to keep up. Or perhaps the endomorphins that cycling creates in the body simply crowded the fledgling illness out sending it spinning to the kerbside. The only sounds were the squeals of swallows looping and diving over the corn, the swishing of the cranks, and the tyres humming contentedly as my bike carried me homeward.

Seeking E-lec-tricity.

I slipped over to Dilton Marsh to pick up a take-away. It was merely some stir-fried vegetables for my wife, and a curry for myself, no chips this time, just a portion of boiled rice, we were being good. the ride was a nice pootle, waves of showery rain were sweeping in but I had my Millets camo mac on and I was feeling pretty comfortable. Turning off the main road towards Dilton I heard a tremendously loud buzzing and thought maybe a bee had got into the hood of my coat. I pulled over and was amazed to find that the buzzing and fizzing was coming from a nearby pylon. The rain was reacting strangely with the electricity, having stopped I could smell something weird and metallic on the air, a bit ozone-ish. Oblivious to the pitter-patter of fat raindrops on my helmet, I stood astride my bike in the layby and my mind drifted back eleven years to another ride I made regularly between Chippenham and Hilmarton. I used to cycle home via Lyneham and Dauntsey on the winding back roads. One rainy day I was pushing the cranks into a mild headwind, my eyes fixed on a point on the rolling tarmac two metres ahead of my front wheel as the misty rain permeated the air. All of a sudden I felt an intense physical pressure on the top of my head, as if someone had pushed my head down. The air was making that crackling, fizzing sound redolent with the whiff of ozone. Looking up I realised I had just ridden under a powercable hanging over the road. I spent the next five minutes riding under it again and again, repeatedly feeling the strange pressure on my head before I became a bit wary of what it might be doing to my personal electromagnetic field. I continued on my journey and very soon the looming problem of the narrow, hairpin climb into Bradenstoke over subsiding tarmac pushed the recent eltromagnetic bath out of my mind. I’ve ridden under a fair few powercables since in all kinds of weather but have never again felt that curious pressure. Hearing that fizzing today brought it all back. Those are pretty powerful forces in those wires, especially when it rains. Back to the present day, that line of pylons runs parallel to the road to Dilton, as I rode beside the line it was apparent that it was just that one Pylon making the noise.

By the time I was on the return journey, my Hi-Viz vest stuffed with leaking plastic tubs of tuck, the rain had stopped and so had the fizzing.

Apparently my first word as a baby was ‘Pylon’, this was because as my dad drove me through the Cumbrian countryside, he would intone ‘pylon, pylon, pylon, pylon’ as we passed each steel-framed colossus. I’ve always been fascinated by them, I don’t know what it is, the size, the fact that they don’t blend in at all, all that negative space…

Post title from Electricity by Captain Beefheart.

Singin through you to me
Thunderbolts caught easily
Shouts the truth peacefully
Electricity

High voltage man kisses night to bring the light to those who need to hide their shadow deed
Go into bright find the light and know that friends don’t mind just how you grow

Midnight cowboy stained in black reads dark roads without a map
To free-seeking electricity (repeat) (Repeat both lines)

Lighthouse beacon straight ahead straight ahead across black seas to bring
Seeking electricity

High voltage man kisses night to bring the light to those who need to hide their shadow-deed hide their shadow-deed (repeat)
Seek electricity………..

I like it, it’s a travelling song and it uses a theramin.

Book – Cycling’s Golden Age

First up, I forgot to mention yesterday that as we rode into Frome with John in front he pulled a pretty nice bunny hop at 30mph on the town bridge, not bad going on a steel frame racing bike, well it impressed me anyway.

I was in Waterstone’s Salisbury earlier today and I found a book called Cycling’s Golden Age, a collection of photographs and artifacts from postwar cycle racing.

It is an incredibly beautiful book, click here to see inside it on Amazon. I think it’s going to have to go on the birthday list.

Tuesday Ride II

It seemed to be threatening to thunder pretty much all day today, but the weather was good enough for riding despite a middling headwind. My first ride of the day was on the Brompton, from Bradford-on-Avon back home having dropped off my car for its MOT. A nice easy ride along the Braford-Trowbridge cycle path and then along the Wingfield straight. Buzzards aplenty on the route, I saw four and heard a couple of others.

In the evening I met up with John Hayes for what is becoming a regular Tuesday evening ride. I had been feeling pretty lethargic all day, perhaps due to the closeness of the air, so I’d tried to pep myself up with a large mug of black Java. It hadn’t kicked in by the time we started riding. We had some vague idea about taking the A36 and the Black Dog up to Cley Hill then back through Corsley onto the Frome bypass, but the A36 was closed due to an accident (expect the usual ‘Horror Smash’ headline in the Wiltshire Times if it was a bad one), so we swung out towards Frome. The headwind was making things less fun so we decided to head through Frome town centre where we hoped we’d get some shelter before getting the wind behind us to blast round the bypass. That was the theory.

I mounted a Pantaniesque breakaway on the hill into the outskirts of Frome, but pretty soon had to sit down and start clicking through the lower gears in order to keep moving. Into town pretty much bang on the speed limit then up the town centre hill, a nasty, steep, curving climb. Once again I was cursing the front mech, but John gave me some gearing tips to cure the slow shifting from big to middle ring. I led the way out of town at 17mph, we had a breather and a chat at the Roundabout by Sainsbury’s, then we began our descent onto the bypass. John led and we clocked 41.4mph on the downhill which felt pretty nice, hands on the drops blasting the pedals round in high gear. However it rapidly became apparent that the wind had shifted and we were once again cycling into a sodding headwind. There was a tremendous amount of fast moving traffic on the road so we were able to slipstream some lorries (see pic above) in order to get up the gradients. By Rode we turned right off the A361 towards Rudge. Away from the wind we thundered round the lanes two abreast. It got a bit dangerous when we came across a 4×4 hurtling up the narrow hill we were trying to come down at 30+mph. My back wheel started skidding out into John’s path as I braked, but I managed to stop the drift and squeeze past the stupidly large vehicle without mishap.

We stopped for another chat at Southwick before we went our seperate ways. Our average was down to 15.6 mph, John had blown his legs the evening before at the Gym. Still, not bad for 23 miles.

Next week mountain-biking, hopefully with our chum Rob Bunce. It should be interesting because I haven’t ridden off-road properly for years and also, I’ve always been pretty poor at it anyway, seemingly spending more time falling off than actually riding. We’ll see what happens.

The Eternal Reek of Damp Wool

I have just returned from a weekend away in Wales with my family. A good time was had by all even though the rain was near continuous. I’ve been going to the Brecon Beacons since I was too small to remember, my father was from the area, a little farm called Forest Lodge. He used to have to cycle into school, looking at the undulating hills and narrow roads it becomes apparent how my Father was able to keep cycling into his forties (he died age fifty) even though he smoked forty a day. That basic level of fitness and ability to cycle long distances, up and down all but the steepest gradient was forged on the anvil of those hills. I remember him once telling me how his brakes failed coming downhill into Heol Y Senni and he came off onto the tarmac. The bike was fine and he painfully carried on, having to sit a maths test with blood seeping through the gauze bandages covering his road-rash.

Normlly the only cycling you hear about in the Beacons is mountain-biking, but this year we saw loads of road bikes powering down the excellent A roads around Sennybridge and Glyntawe. At the Mountain Centre near Libanus there was a display of ‘50 years of the Brecon Beacons National Park’, I took a snap of this rather nice photo of a touring group resting above Talybont. Witness the geezer in the beret.

Sunday was of course Father’s Day. The Boys got me this Tour-de-France guide which came with a free History of the Tour DVD. It’s published by the people who create Cycling Weekly so it’s a pretty good lowdown of all the teams etc.

It also came with a free Rapha catalogue. My Birthday isn’t until October, but seeing this catalogue, I feel the list is already starting to be compiled! Result!

The title of this post comes from the Mint Sauce cartoon strip drawn by Jo Burt for MBUK magazine. I have Mint sauce stickers on my Mountain Bike.

Bike-Train-Bike

I had to go to Salisbury for work purposes today. Just to make it interesting, my car is due its MOT and is therefore off the road, so I had to bike from the village to Trowbridge to catch the train. The ride of choice was of course the Brompton. Unlike the good old days of the ‘guards van’, most rail operators in the UK won’t let you take your bike onboard the train without a reservation, even then it’s not certain you will get on the train with your bike, the conductor may still turn you away for any number of reasons. It’s a major bone of contention with cyclists, and a symptom of extreme short-sightedness in the rail operators (and indeed transport policy-makers). It would be fantastic to just get on the train with your bike without any hassle and head on to South Wales, The Cotswalds, Scotland, where-ever. I’d love to just load the bike onto the guard’s van, meeting up with other cyclists as they come and go from the train. It’s not some weird cycling utopian dream (like ‘why can’t everywhere be like Centre Parcs’), it’s how it used to be. I have fond memories of being in the guard’s van with my dad on the way to London. There was always a cat in a cage, a massive trunk, two tea chests and at least four cyclists at any one time. The floors were wooden and well-worn, planks moving about as the train bogies swung round the corners, alarming creaks and rattles coming from everywhere, great fun. Well those days are over, the idea of having to reserve a space for your bike, or not take it on certain services during certain peak times of day, seems to me to be the antithesis of what cycling represents; freedom and spontaneity in travel. So what can you do if you want to turn up unannounced on the train with your bike and still be allowed to take it on board? The answer is buy a folding bicycle. As far as I am aware all train operators allow them on board fully folded. In theory the bike should also be covered, but in the few years I’ve been taking the Brompton on trains I’ve never had any bother with my bike being uncovered, though I know others have.
Anyway, got up late, missed the first train, caught the second, had to wait at Westbury station for ages. On the Southampton train I stored the bike in the luggage/disabled area (I would have given the space up if anyone needed it) and relaxed for the 20 mins into Salisbury. Relaxed a bit too much, fell asleep, arrived grumpy and befuddled. Still Zoe, one of my colleagues in espace solutions LLP (websites:design:consultancy), soon cheered me up, firstly by giving me her dogs to look after while she dropped her girls off at nursery, and secondly by handing me a much needed cup of tea. I changed out of my enormous trousers into more suitable work attire, did a job of work, then after a nice little ride through town I caught the train back. I noticed that the clip holding the handlebars to the wheel when the bike is folded is starting to fail, leading to the handlebars unfolding when I pick it up. I know it’s possible to get a custom made clip so I’ll need to look into that, either that or make my own.

I decided to get off at Warminster and cycle back that way. Not sure why, I think I just prefer the A36 to the A361, not that there’s much in it really. Also, from warminster there was more downhill. It was spitting with rain, thankfully I’d just missed a downpour (about 0.25 inch of rain) and the ride back was pretty easy. I think that constitutes the longest single ride I’ve done on the Brompton, a mere eight or so miles. However, I did have the front bag loaded up with a laptop, my filofax, my notebook and a complete change of clothes.