Aimed to do 100 miles without leaving the Borough of Basingstoke and Deane today but failed. Started really early under lights and managed to beat the first band of rain, which was rather biblical and made navigating the hills to e south of Basingstoke entertaining. Too entertaining. Just as it was getting light, the rear tyre went flat. I couldn't find a culprit but the tyre carcass seemed sound and carried on. The second band of rain was forecast to be heavier than the first but was fortunately not. There were plenty of flooded sections and enough gravel on the roads to start a building site.
Just as I could see the blue sky of the promised weather window in the west, the rear tyre went flat again. This time the culprit was easy to find, a piece of flint you could sell to a museum as a stone-age tool. In one way that was comforting, but I'd now used up my two spare tubes and still had over 40 miles of flinty lanes to go. Wisdom prevailed and I head on the B-road back from Whitchurch to Basingstoke. I'd get home on just over 70 miles. But there was a feeling of unfinished business, I'd got out at 5am with a pass to do 100 miles and didn't really want to cash that in for 70, despite the attraction of a coffee and a hot bath. Back in Basingstoke I went along the southern ring road and up the hill on the A30 towards Hook. A few random circuits in the sunshine brought the ton up, but it did mean that I strayed out of Basingstoke and Deane into Hart District (as my house is quite close to the eastern side of the Borough).