Kate M

Spring miles

Friday 19th Jun

The first few weeks of spring ended up not being great weather wise, and there was lots of coming and going with kids activities. But there was a strong May goal to aim for so I started going the long way to work and back more often as well as getting some decent weekend rides in with my pal Kirsty. I’m lucky (or am I clever…) where I live as I have a pretty straightforward 4 mile bike commute to work on roads, big roundabout then parks. It’s not really doable in the dark, so the way home is slightly shorter but goes past a couple of schools where the parents are absolutely feral drivers. To be avoided at drop off and pick up at all costs. But what makes it really good, is that the Bristol Bath Path (the Sustrans OG) is a mile from home and connects to work via the Ring Road cycle path (recently upgraded) so I have a12 mile off road alternative route. I can’t always go there and back, but with my lap top, change of clothes and crap commuting bike, it’s a solid hour of cycling and just adding it a couple of times a week can quickly turn a 100k weekend ride into a 100mile week.

 

Kirsty and I also did some super rides, with a highlight being Bristol – Abergavenny – Monmouth – Bristol. We’d found an excellent bakery* en route to Aberystwyth last year and were keen to revisit it. We met another cyclist there from a local club, and were chatting with him about the road we were planning to take to Monmouth. I’d spotted it driving in Wales at Easter and thought ‘ooh that looks like a fun road to cycle down’ so planned the route around it. Bike Man however didn’t think we were up to it and tried warning us that it was very hilly. Well more fool him, not only was I right, and it was a lovely road to cycle down, turned out I’d cycled down it before, with my pals Gareth and Trist, who is sadly no longer with us. Funnily enough, once we’d done the ‘hilly’ road, we got lost in Monmouth and ended up outside Gareth’s office.  

 

The big May goal was the Pauline Porter Populaire, which is the companion event to the (in)famous Bryan Chapman Memorial. Both start in Chepstow and go to Anglesey and back over the weekend. PPP though you get your bag taken to a youth hostel and sleep there 2 nights. It was always going to be ambitious, but we were confident we could at least get through the first day. Hahahaha. Oh my goodness. Broadly the hills and route were ok. What was not okay was my kit. We had a headwind all day and it was FREEZING. I hadn’t realised how stressful I found being cold. We also had something of a collapse of morale at mile 130 when we realised that the last hour was going to take two and a half hours, owing to a 900foot climb which we had to walk up in our socks and then a lovely sweeping road which would have been glorious had there not been a gate. Every. 300. Metres. And then the road down to the youth hostel was so steep and gravelly we had to walk that too. But hot curry and bags with our dry clothes in awaited and morale was restored. Mostly. Saturday it poured with rain and we didn’t do so well. We managed 100k, broken up with 2 cups of coffee and 3 hours eating chips and playing dominoes in a pub. I had to buy an emergency fleece and we didn’t make it to Anglesey. But we did ride 100k. Sunday we totally sacked off, cycling 50k to the railway station and getting a train home. Zero regrets. It actually ended up being a 250 mile (400k?) week and quite an adventure. Next year though Pauline, we’re coming for you.

 

* Angel Bakery. 

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