98 The Hills are Alive

Psycholists love stats - hence the Strava app that I have mentioned before. Apart from the usual facts and figures that the normal person would understand - previous experience of driving a car with its speedometer will mean most people are familiar with distance travelled over a period of time, for example - there are the other stats that ordinary people do  not grasp. Calorific intake and fat acreage are two that seem to pass a lot of people by, for example. The Strava calculates your energy output - burnt calories but also calculates the highly useful  average wattage you are putting out. It may be the case that if you were able to strap a family sized fridge-freezer combo to your bicycle you'd be happy to find out that you could keep your isotonic pop 'well chilled' as you tootled along.
A big thanks to Candy for her contribution.
As N and D and a lorra other cyclists gathered in a Dorking car park, apps at the ready, I set off up Lisson Grove towards Luton, my own app sucking in the GPS info. Despite the pressure of keeping up with the compadres down South I had time to snap a picture of another of Barnet's hidden treasures:

By ten, both the Chilterns and the Surrey Hills were buzzing with the sound of chain on sprocket. People literally flew past me on their lighter-than-air carbon fibre bikes. Just to be different, I weighed myself down with ballast - cycle locks, maps, tools, extra clothing etc, and general excess baggage. It was a nippy day with cold winds coming from many directions and by the time I got to Tring, having cut across from Kimpton, I'd had enough of hills and so sped to Chesham via a town recently built in honour of the man responsible for the increased cycle sales over the last year or so:

The particular stat everyone is after in the hills is the elevation - how much you climbed up. As previously mentioned, we don't have big mountain climbs in this country, especially in Hillingdon or Sutton. On the continent, you climb several thousand feet all in one go like this

 or this:

while here, you have to do lots and lots of little ones - like this:

Boys with toys!

104-99 The Weather

N and D are off into the hills on Sunday. They start from Dorking at 07.15 hundred O'clock on a 75 miles sportive (long distance bike race for amateur psycholists). I can't be doing with such an early start so I will put in 75 from my pad. I am looking forward to glancing the perimeter fence of Luton Aeroporto before heading back south to Rickmansworth and Denham to board a train at West Ruislip. This sudden burst of activity has, of course, been inspired by the improving weather. The thin veneer of the glossy shop window sunshine is, however, only hiding a resilient chilly wind which is still whipping around. Big, grown-up men and women are still out there on their shard-like saddles in tights, booties and ballroom gloves.
Thank you Sister Rebecca for your donation. It is my plan to cycle up to her place in Buxton.
I have had easy week with just one commute to Brixton and back, though I have walked plenty of miles as a penance. With just a week to go to Le Dash, it is time to tease oneself by scouring everyweather site available - from the BBC's, where the viewers send in the weather themselves, to the lurid graphics of Accuweather or the minutae of xc-weather. Currently, there is a strong possibilty of rain with sunny spells with temperatures hovering between -17  and 35, and variable windspeeds and a chance of snow on higher low ground.

a typical BBC weather forecast

There are also the classy european sites.

sunny spells with broken swirly cloud

113 -105 Ham and Beeches

Saturday. A spotless, blue sky, no wind and everyone is on a bike. There musta bin queues at dawn outside Halfords, Evans and Argos as there was a lot of shiny new gear out the tough streets of Ham.
It had been another hasty decision for a settlement's name - more burghers with better things to do, such as lay down the basis and prerequisites for the Industrial Revolution. 
'It's a hamlet, good citizen, Richard."
"But one with no distinguishing features, good citizen, Ethelred. What are we to do?"
"I need to get back to work on my idea for a steam powered Derrick - has any one every thought of just shortening Hamlet to Ham, good citizen Richard?"


The plan, today, was to do half the route of the Ride - Sheen Gate to Box Hill via West Byfleet and Leith Hill - sixty miles or so and the tough half.
There are routines for weekly checks on bikes. It is handy if your wheels don't fall of or that the brakes work. Work your way around the bike with Allen keys and keep it all nice and tight. This is particularly necessary in the light of the state of our suburban roads. Ride 100 will be closed to traffic but there is another hazard - the roads themselves. The highways and byways were resurfaced for the Olympics but they missed a few potholes:

just this side of Walton.

If you are cycling in a group, the person at the front has the responsibility of pointing out any hazards - potholes, glass, drainage covers, snakes, landslips, five pound notes and so on.  There are a variety of gestures employed and vocal warnings such as: GLASS! Clever huh. Invariably, however, whoever is at the front is just acting as a windbreak and my notorious excess has sheltered many a cyclist from headwinds.

We were tootling along nicely and had just left London as we nipped over the M25 at Byfleet. N shouted to us to stop. It was an abrupt shout kind of shout - not the kind of shout you use it you want to hop over a hedge for a toilet stop, or stop at a pleasant cafe for a refreshing hot beverage. It was a hurried, spur of the moment kind of shout and so we stopped in a conveniently placed lay-by. Some key piece of N's bike and fallen off in the preceding 15 miles and, with that piece probably already embedded in a car tyre, another key piece of bike had worked its way loose. N was just about to abort his participation in the mission and retreat to a nearby train station when a white van pulled up in the lay-by and out jumped a bicycle mechanic. He swiftly ascertained that a key piece of N's bike had, indeed, fallen off and following a quick call to Halfords, secured a replacement part which was fitted, at no cost, after a slight backtrack over the M25 to a small retail park in Byfleet. The hero in the white van had a bike shop of his own of in Hersham, as made famous by Jimmy Pursey and Sham 69. Do drop in to WA Cycles, www.wa-limited.com. if, for some bizarre reason, you are in Hersham.
Hope we get the opportunity to pass it forward.

N took charge of just the one navigation job. He knows the roads in this neck of the woods like the back of his neck and so in no time at all we were making an unscheduled coffee stop in the delightful village of Shere, a ham-let buried deep in a leafy Surrey valley and seemingly lost in time as they still trade in LSD (pounds shillings and pence). Well they don't really, but they could have done.

Having retraced our tracks back up the extremely steep hill we had flown down in error, we rose up to Ranham Common with its view over the vast plain south extending from the North Ridge to the South Ridge with its views of the vast plain to the north extending back up to the North Ridge. We reached Boxhill and enjoyed splendid carrot cake and coffee. 

I generally ride back to East Ewell, the Outer Limit of the Oystercard Empire, and return on a cheap train through places such as Carshalton Beeches. The burghers of this little place obviously had a bit more to go on.

96 miles on bike
5 miles run

113, 112, Safely does it.

Not two weeks ago, RP was being mercilessly swept by a wind so cold that the Polar bears of London Zoo had Ugg booties on. Today, there was the odour of cheap, hurriedly bought sun tan lotion hovering on the breeze. The winter wide-ness of the Outer Ring Road wilderness has been summarily replaced by bumper to bumper parking and frequent double-parkers. From between the tightly packed cars, like an eighties computer game, dopey pedestrians would unexpectedly pop out - often pram first - into the oncoming pelotons of cyclists and taxis. At the pedestrian crossings - controlled by lights, the sun-baked would drift across while cyclists hurtled through their midsts while the light was still red or amber. All in all the hazards of the cold and wet and poor light have been replaced by those of a congested theme park. 

Behind you!

So keep your wits about you.


Richmond Park is grassy area of rural south western London, famous for its deer and Fenton the wonderdog. It has a seven mile peripherique that, at the weekends, is jam packed with proper pelotons. The ones in the Regent's Park are never more the five or six but in the much bigger RP they contain over twenty psycholists. I joined N and D at Sheen Gate on Saturday morning and took in two laps. While they disappeared into the distance on their very nice and fast Focus bikes, I was constantly being passed by the chattering, grunting pelotons of the London Dynamo team. Cycling teams  such as London Dynamo are comprised of the kind of cyclists who do Ride100 style rides before lunch as a warm up. They have thighs that look like jodhpurs or as if they have been photo-shopped or are what you see in the crazy mirrors on a seaside pier. They have to wear specially made trousis and sit in specially adapted furniture. 

joking...?

Ride100 is a closed event meaning that the route will be shut to traffic. But the hazard of cars is replaced by the dangers of a peloton of potentially thousands of cyclists.

The week: 83 miles on the bike
0 run
0 football

119, 118, 117, 116, 115, 114. Le Dash

This week, in spite of imminent nuclear war in the Far East, Thatcher, and the persistent bad weather, Le Dash has been finalised. D, N and I have decided to ditch the tents and, in their stead, share a bed in a rather pleasant looking hotel in Montreuil Sur Mer, a name, if I haven't mentioned before, that incorporates a broad interpretation of the word 'Sur', given the 'Mer' in question requires a brisk 10 mile walk. We will visit playground of Paris, Le Touquet, for an enjoyable luncheon of marine wildlife before heading inland to Montreuil Sur Mer. 
The Sunday, will be spent, in part, in search for anything open other than Macdonald's. France is extraordinarily stubborn about its Sunday Closing Hours, so beware and stock up with rations the day before, if you fancy a similar jaunt yourselves. But, if this doesn't grab you, how about something off road:

121, 120. Fryin' Barnet

My cycling buddies live in remote areas of London - Balham and Sheen. These sleepy hamlets are both well placed for the Surrey Hills, where Ride 100 will get down to its hilly business but they are also well south of the river and so, while D and N swan off to Box Hill with their bikes stashed in the boots of their motor cars, unless I get up before I go to bed I have to leave them to it. Instead, I head north, often to the delights of Friern and High Barnet. On my reckless route, I take in the previously mentioned Regent's Park before heading to Swain's Lane and Highgate. Some local burghers, many hundreds of years ago, stood scratching their heads as they tried to decide what name to give to their recently built settlement. Looking about them there was little to choose from apart from an inexplicably and abnormally high gate. It was late, everyone wanted to get home and so they went with High Gate. 
From there, head over to Muswell Hill then beyond to the vast, endless undulations of North London before reaching the outer limits of this city - the M25 near Potter's Bar.  En route there us much to see: a classic Odeon Cinema in Barnet,  robust the Deco-ish 30's mansion blocks about Golder's Green, Friern Barnet's classic town hall.

This particular leg-stretcher clocks up 30 miles, returning through Finchley and West Hampstead before having to stop at the world's most famous pedestrian crossing to wait as Beatles fans lark about outside Abbey Road studios which was recently sold by EMI  and has since been converted into a Kwik Fit franchise. 

60 miles on bike
5 mile 'run'
1 soccerball match: 48 mins running around; 12 mins shotstopper.

124, 123,122

It is another week of bitter winds and icicles on my handlebars. The Regent's Park, despite a nasty northerly down the back straight hurling snow that stung like grit, was, however, host to hardy runners and peddlers, grinning and bearing it. The Brahs monkeys, sadly, had dropped from the trees, their icy brittle limbs no longer able to hang on. They have cut back the unruly, unkempt hedges surrounding TRP and one can now glimpse the lake, scene, many years ago, of The Who miming 'The Kids Are Alright' very badly.

Le Dash has been hastily organised: late train to Newhaven; overnight ferry to Dieppe; 65 miles on, camp in a rather nice town encrusted on a hill, Montreuil sur Mer; then cut across the Pas de Calais for an early evening ferry back to Dover - 120 miles or so of easy going country.

I have got by mass of body down to 14st 8 lbs. I no longer need certain elements of my significant wardrobe. I was able to sell a selection of my casual trousis - see below - on ebay to a provincial cricket club who were short of covers for their wickets.