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!