Well that was a very interesting ride. The weather looked on the forecast to be fairly regularly wet, but my experience was 'no rain till almost back to the Severn Bridge'. Even then it was the sort of rain that you only know about cos it flashes in your headlight!! So a good 90% dry day!,
Temperatures good all day, too....
I rode the first half with my alter ego, Bairdy, plus an assortment of 'come & go' audaxers. Names I recall are Caerau (Man of Steel), Guto, Jase (audaxwebby?), but there were several others. Please remind me, with a description if you can, to help me nail you down in my memory!!!
I struggle to stand up still, due to my hip injury (it never formed a bone to bone mend, so is held together by scar tissue. I can't go shopping with the wife, cos I literally get out of breath standing still. If walking I favour the duff side, but you can't do that if still!
Anyway, cos the controls prior to halfway, all involved standing up with no real chance of sitting, I could not face any more, so apologised to Bairdy, and bounced the garden centre and the rest of the controls....
I finished the 406 kms in 19 hours 48 mins, or thereabouts!!
Toby was awesome - passed us going the other way, when we had maybe 35 kms to go to halfway! (So he was maybe 70 kms ahead of us.... PHUQQ.....)
Cycling Dave J did a pretty good ride, too... Every time I saw him he was dragging a 'Mötley Crüe' around. That included us for a while, early on. Well done Dave!
Earlier Rob (Bairdy) had cleat trouble, and we were going to mess around with a multi tool, when I had a brainwave... We both use Terry's Cycles in Yate, and I remembered the route went right by the shop.. A bit of calculation suggested we would get there at about 9 am when they open. So that's what we did, arriving there with the garmins saying exactly 9 am, too.... It wasn't just adjustment, but Nigel at Terry's fitted brand new cleats, there and then, so that was a good result!
Another interesting anecdote. We were in Acton Turville, about to take the Malmesbury Road, when out popped Caerau, saying the road was closed, with great big fences all across the road. I thought it strange, cos I'd been that way on my way up to Bedford a few weeks before, and they had a pedestrian bridge set up to one side, but he was adamant, and I just happened, being local, to know the alternative was only one or two kms anyway, so we went around. I gathered a few others who didn't know the area, and was pleased to help them, too . Later Dai and his mate, on the tandem, told me they had ridden across the bridge, so on the way back I did it too... To be fair to C (Dave), you have to be almost on top of it to see the gaps in the fences.....
