A Kent ride on Saturday 20th November

[Wowbagger]

Jane, it was my choice to ride and it was great. After all, I could have bailed at Faversham if I'd wanted to, but I would willingly have suffered ten times the pain just for the pleasure of your company, even though you were a bit parsimonious with the cherries!  

I treat my GPS as a scrolling map, having plotted my desired route in beforehand using Bikehike. It means that you can glance down at the device and make a decision without having to stop to look at a real map. All the map reading has been done at home.

Helen told me you wanted to make your routes clickable like wot I do. For that you need a bit of webspace to store them on. Do you have such a commodity? For the princely sum of £1 a month you can get some on this very server and I would willingly show you how to transfer stuff across. Let's face it, if I can do it, it isn't hard.

[nicknack]

If I didn't work Saturdays I might well have joined you. What route did you do?

[Wowbagger]

Yesterday's route:-

Jane's Bearsted Ride

[Auntie Helen]

Jane, you don't need to get a GPS - nothing wrong with using paper maps!

Besides, you can provide the route to us without you owning a GPS anyway - as Wowbagger says you can draw the route in Bikehike or Bikeroutetoaster or something and then send us the GPX file or put it on webspace if you have any. The GPX file provides the route to our machines. Mind you, we changed the route anyway due to running short on time so even if you'd pre-done the route we would have gone off it anyway on purpose. My gadget was useful there to find the route to the next village that you mentioned which gave us an idea of distances, but none of the GPSes were at all necessary for us to do the ride - we're just used to having 'em.

[ianrauk]

A lovely ride Jane, thanks.

Yup, the descent into Bearstead was quite hairy indeed.. myself and AH really canned it down Hollingbourne Hill. AH faster then me due to the stability of 3 wheels over 2. At points I was hanging on to my bike by the seat of my pants, hands in a death grip on the brake levers.

[Auntie Helen]

Well to be honest I was going too fast for my available lighting but was very keen to catch everyone up and not keep James waiting. Don't think I'll be going quite that fast downhill on an unknown road in the dark with wet/muddy surface and rather poor lighting with a possible puncture again in the future...

[PaulR]

I came belting down Hollingbourne Hill one sunny day in June 2006, on my way from Paris back to London, and was overtaken by a friend who had gravity on his side to a greater extent than I did.  He clocked 46mph compared to my 41 or so.  I asked him how he felt able to do that, given the gravelly bends and dark shady patches.  He simply said "You've got to go somehow".

A nice hill, and sorry to have missed this ride.  Jurek was spotted in Bromley by Miss R.

[fhills]

I know how annoying it can be when you go riding with a mate (I'm not speaking of anyone in particular, am I , fhills?) and they don't let you in on the ride's little secrets because they think you like surprises! 

ere, what ride could that be?  the odd extra hill round the corner, the odd muddy ditch, the odd climb over a barbed wire fence .. all part of the fun

[jane]

Yesterday's route:-

Jane's Bearsted Ride

Now that is very clever and Jurek had already mentioned to me that I could upload (or whatever you do) the bikehike route to a web space in that way.  i do use bikehike to plot a route and wanted to get a link to it on our very own Lewisham Cyclist web pages but wasn't able to find out how to do this in time for the ride.  It would be useful to be able to do that for all our Lewisham rides.  Is that possible- we use wordpress for our site.  I couldn't find any facility on the site that would let me do it.

PS.  The route Wow posted above was our revised route- the original route was back through Lenham then south of the M20 through Kingswood and Leeds. 

[Wowbagger]

Well all I did was to post a link and the Lewisham Cyclists website certainly has links. The Events page has a whole load of links with maps showing the locations of railway stations.

[Jurek]

Well all I did was to post a link and the Lewisham Cyclists website certainly has links. The Events page has a whole load of links with maps showing the locations of railway stations.

Methinks you may be looking at the old and now defunct Lewisham Cyclists site - it is coloured predominately in blue....

The site to which Jane refers is here, and is (possibly) a different beast.....

[her_welshness]

I came belting down Hollingbourne Hill one sunny day in June 2006, on my way from Paris back to London, and was overtaken by a friend who had gravity on his side to a greater extent than I did.  He clocked 46mph compared to my 41 or so.  I asked him how he felt able to do that, given the gravelly bends and dark shady patches.  He simply said "You've got to go somehow".

Ha! I have to say that the overall surface of the hill was not bad, there were two splodges in the road that I managed to avoid, thanks to the cars coming up the hill  

[Wowbagger]

Well all I did was to post a link and the Lewisham Cyclists website certainly has links. The Events page has a whole load of links with maps showing the locations of railway stations.

Methinks you may be looking at the old and now defunct Lewisham Cyclists site - it is coloured predominately in blue....

The site to which Jane refers is here, and is (possibly) a different beast.....

Aha! I was indeed.

[Wowbagger]

GPSies.com GPS - Fahrradtour - Strecke Bearsted - ME14 4 Maidstone, Bearsted, Kent, England shows yesterday's route in gpsies.com. You can store your routes there - I've just registered and put yesterday's ride there. It's a German* site so the "Tracks of Wowbagger" translation is a little clumsy.

The map behind it is Open Street Map, which is very encouraging. There is also a useful elevation chart inset into the map.

*I think the URL the site generated gives this away, somehow.

[clarion]

Did Helen notice, I wonder, that not only was there a boat just like hers at Conyer, but also one called 'Poppy'?

[Jurek]

Did Helen notice, I wonder, that not only was there a boat just like hers at Conyer, but also one called 'Poppy'?

I confess to having spotted the boat named 'Poppy' 

[Auntie Helen]

Ahem Clarion, not paying attention to my write-up above in this thread:

We passed Swale Marina and they had the doppelgänger for our boat in there which was a bit unusual.

I did also see the Poppy boat but stinkpots ain't the thang amongst sailing circles.

[Adam]

Thanks also to Jurek for reminding me quickly enough whenever I missed a turn so we only had a few yards to backtrack.

He is very good at that sort of thing.  I think the man must have a built in GPS, as on a couple of rides I've been leading but deviated from the published route, he's shouted out a wrong way almost instantly.  Uncanny but very useful.

[jane]

GPSies.com GPS - Fahrradtour - Strecke Bearsted - ME14 4 Maidstone, Bearsted, Kent, England shows yesterday's route in gpsies.com. You can store your routes there - I've just registered and put yesterday's ride there. It's a German* site so the "Tracks of Wowbagger" translation is a little clumsy.

The map behind it is Open Street Map, which is very encouraging. There is also a useful elevation chart inset into the map.

*I think the URL the site generated gives this away, somehow.

Yay!!!! This one works- easy peasy- I managed to get a route onto our site from here no problem.  Don't know why bikehike route was proving such a pain- this one is prettier too- you get a little cow icon on your web page- thanks Wow.

[Wowbagger]

GPSies.com GPS - Fahrradtour - Strecke Bearsted - ME14 4 Maidstone, Bearsted, Kent, England shows yesterday's route in gpsies.com. You can store your routes there - I've just registered and put yesterday's ride there. It's a German* site so the "Tracks of Wowbagger" translation is a little clumsy.

The map behind it is Open Street Map, which is very encouraging. There is also a useful elevation chart inset into the map.

*I think the URL the site generated gives this away, somehow.

Yay!!!! This one works- easy peasy- I managed to get a route onto our site from here no problem.  Don't know why bikehike route was proving such a pain- this one is prettier too- you get a little cow icon on your web page- thanks Wow.

It's because Bikehike doesn't store the route for you. Up to a few months ago Bikehike had a database facility but the bloke who ran it had a panic because some legal type told him he could be sued if someone followed one of his routes and came a cropper, so he got rid of the database. You can still create routes there but you have to store them elsewhere, hence a bit of my webspace being devoted to them.

Clearly the Germans are not frightened by such stupid litigation threats.

Anyway, glad it worked. I do like to give a lady pleasure.

[clarion]

Ahem Clarion, not paying attention to my write-up above in this thread:

We passed Swale Marina and they had the doppelgänger for our boat in there which was a bit unusual.

I did also see the Poppy boat but stinkpots ain't the thang amongst sailing circles.

Ah.  OK, so you did see it.  I was amused.

Not only did I pay attention to your write up, I was right with you when you first spotted the cat, so I did know that one.  I wouldn't have known enough to recognise it otherwise

[jane]

I know how annoying it can be when you go riding with a mate (I'm not speaking of anyone in particular, am I , fhills?) and they don't let you in on the ride's little secrets because they think you like surprises!  

ere, what ride could that be?  the odd extra hill round the corner, the odd muddy ditch, the odd climb over a barbed wire fence .. all part of the fun

I think a few people on the ride on Saturday thought I had slightly morphed into you.  I guess someone has to carry on the Lewisham Hell of (insert whatever ride start fhills has chosen here) Rides.

[fhills]

[/quote]
I think a few people on the ride on Saturday thought I had slightly morphed into you.  I guess someone has to carry on the Lewisham Hell of (insert whatever ride start fhills has chosen here) Rides.

[/quote]

Well it sounds like a great ride of yours - will try to do if you repeat it and I'm around. Impressive turnout - very dangerous to actually tell folk about your rides of course

Forza Lewisham
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