Day Five - A star studded occasion

Day Five - Bamber Bridge to Carlisle - 100 miles +4345 ft / -4395 ft 
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2288087

One of the pleasures of this trip is that I am getting to see parts of the country that I have not previously visited and learn a little more about my homeland every day.  Today I learned that Bamber Bridge was named in honour of Nash Bridges the 1996 TV series starring Don Johnson and Cheech out of Cheech and Chong.  Apparently the first episode had the highest ratings for a non-primetime US detective show the town has ever seen, such was the mania for the programme the town was immediately re-named.  Prior to this the town was simply known as Bamber, itself a tribute to the former University Challenge host Bamber Gasgoine.

Whereas today's final destination of Carlisle was re-named following the success of the film Trainspotting and the townfolk's passion for the character of Francis Begbie.......

A mere 100 miles today so a bit of a rest compared to the long slog of yesterday.  The ride started out flat and with a decent tailwind.  We made very good progress stopping for pop / cakes at about 30 miles in.  Following the coffee stop things got a bit more serious, most of the days climbing was compressed into a section between 30 miles and 65 miles.  We mostly avoided main roads today so had a bit more time to look at the views thanks to a bit less time needed to second guess mad motorists.

We also had a few decent milestones today, specifically we passed the half way point between Le and JoG just after lunch and half of the climbing at some other point.  Should be easy from now on.

Scenery aside the best thing that happened to me today was during our lunch stop (at a pub called the Cross Keys, surely an omen) I was lucky enough to spot some white dog's mess, a rare thing indeed these days.  I have include a small picture and a bigger one showing the Cambodian peloton.

Post lunch we were faced by a fairly notorious climb which took us 1200ft above sea level, this would have been much easier if I hadn't eaten a massive cheeseburger accompanied by a Glasgow salad (chips).  As it was it was a bit of a struggle.  Clare and Brendan made it to the top in fine form:

Following the climb it was more or less down hill for the remaining 40 miles which was most welcome as I could stand up for much of it and take some weight off my aching gooch.  Today I identified another way in which you know you are on a long cycle ride on greeting your team mates it is socially acceptable to ask after the state of their undercarriage, I don't normally find this to be the case either at work or socially.

Speaking of socially time for a beer I think.  More LeJog blog tomorrow.

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Twitter: @BigBensBike

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Day Four - The Longest Day

Day 4 - Stourport to Bamber Bridge - 114 miles +4840 ft / -4854 ft 
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/4657243

Before everyone gets excited I will start by pointing out that this post is still about cycling and not the classic 1962 war film.  Hopefully it will be as entertaining but with fewer Nazis.  It will certainly contain fewer pictures as I forgot to take many today.

I now need to take the time to make some apologies for the content of some of my earlier Blog posts (day 0 and day 3 respectively):

i)  In yesterday's blog I may have suggested the hotel restaurant would be overpriced and below average food wise.  A rain shower meant we did dine there and it was both good value and delicious.

ii)  On day 0 I mentioned a cycling magazine and its banal list of tips for carrying out a long ride.  I don't quite recall but one of the tips was surely "if it is raining wear your waterproof gear."  More on that one anon.

A bit of a lie in today with a palindromic 7:37 alarm call before an 8:00 breakfast.  This was the earliest the hotel could do which was a bit irritating as an early start would have been ideal ahead of this long day's ride.

We got off to a flying start this morning having made it to the end of the hotel drive way before spotting that Clare had a flat tyre.  Back to the bus for a new inner tube, which we then pinched with a tyre lever and destroyed, then another tube which worked and we were on the way.  If you ever wanted to know how many engineers it takes to change a bike tyre the answer is three......

The other good news at the start of the day was it was raining.  Quite a lot.  As the forecast showed it was supposed to stop quite soon I did not bother to break out my wet weather gear.  What a mistake to make.  The first 30 miles were pretty miserable until our first stop at the Telford equivalent of Cambourne Morissons for a muffin and coffee.  It was here I discovered that hand driers are at an ideal height for drying your undercarriage / gentleman's area.  It was also when the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Despite the rain we made quite good progress throughout the morning until our lunch stop at around 13:30.  Again more or less at lunch time and for the first time on the trip we had lunch inside, this facilitated another visit to a hand drier, this time not because my shorts were wet but because I quite liked it the first time.

The afternoon took in a number of delightful Northern Towns such as Wigan and Warrington, we were running a bit late to visit Matt Griffiths at work which was a shame mainly as he had promised us coffee (and it would have been good to see him!).  Instead here is a picture of a sign with a rude word in it.

You know you have been cycling for too many days when one of your team mates comes out with a line like "only 30 miles to go," as if it is nothing.  And you nod in agreement.  Said 30 miles could best be described as 'dragging on a bit' so it was with great delight that we arrived at the Preston Premier Inn where tour manager Carl was waiting with hot pizza by the van, it was good.

I had a bit of an odd experience during today's expedition in that I saw a taxi drive behave in a considerate way to us cyclists, not something that happens every day.  I am not saying that all taxi drivers are w&nkers to cyclists but they are certainly over represented in the group of motorists that are.......

Tomorrow we head for Carlisle and is our last day in England........

114 miles makes today the longest stage of the LeJog ride.

For regular updates follow me on Twitter.

Twitter: @BigBensBike

To make a donation to Prostate Cancer Research and read a bit about why I chose that charity see my page at:

Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/bigbensbike/

Day Three - Thank goodness a bit flatter.

Day Three - Weston to Stourport on Severn - 99 miles +3089 ft / -2931 ft.  The following link will give you the gist of the route but is a off course in a few bits:
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/4657156

Today started with another pre 07:00 alarm (6:36 to be precise as I like to wake up at a palindromic time) then meeting the guys for breakfast in the Beefeater attached to the hotel, sadly they could not rustle up the steak, ribs and horn of plenty dinner of yesterday evening, but did supply a massive fry up.  A note on dinner last night to thank Uncle Peter for treating Clare and I, much appreciated.

Breakfast out of the way we saddled up and set course towards Bristol, scene of the only real climbing action today.  The two rider groups seemed to have different GPS data so one group ended up going over the Clifton suspension bridge and another going under it then up a chuffing steep hill, that would be my group then.

We benefited from a nice view of the bridge, the others the view from the bridge.   The advantage of our route seemed to be it was shorter as we found ourselves ahead of the pro-peloton for a while!

From Bristol we headed North towards Gloucester, stopping for coffee at the White Horse pub, they provided a lesson in why chain pubs are not as good as independents.  It was 11:30 so they could only offer breakfast food, not lunch until 15 minutes later.  A real computer says no moment, luckily we were in fine spirits so it did not become a falling down moment. 

Like the top athletes we are we chose an alternative lunch spot a few hours up the road, mainly as their colour scheme matches our kit so well.  It felt very strange having lunch at about lunch time, not something we had managed so far this trip.

The riding today was mostly easy going albeit on some roads that were rather busier than I would have liked.  There were even a few chances to get the bike out of the granny ring and up to some higher speeds.  Cyclists can skip this next bit, otherwise read on.  Most road bikes have two front chainrings which dictate how hard it is to pedal and therefore how fast you can go, the smaller of these two is the easiest to pedal, in fact so easy your granny could do it, hence the name.)

Later on there was a moment of panic as we rounded a corner and seemed to end up where we started on Tuesday.

After we stopped to ask directions it turned out there is more than one donkey called Martin (my favourite and only French proverb) and we were in fact in a different Cambridge.  This was a relief.

Today is the first day where we have been further North than the real Cambridge.

The rest of the day's ride was fairly uneventful right up to the last section before the hotel which gave the day a 'summit finish' most unwelcome.  What was welcome was the hotel having a pool and more importantly a hot tub, we are now nicely wrinkled for tomorrows bike action.

Without having seen the menu or being in the bar we have concluded tonight's food offerings will be overpriced and below average so we are going further afield to a local pub for a meal.  I have to remember this is not a normal Friday so will have to cut down on the beer intake a bit.

Tomorrow is the longest day of the trip at 118 miles so an early night tonight.

For regular updates follow me on Twitter.

Twitter: @BigBensBike

To make a donation to Prostate Cancer Research and read a bit about why I chose that charity see my page at:

Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/bigbensbike/

Day Two - Cycling Can be fun

Day Two - Launceston to Weston Super-mare - 102 miles +5378 ft / -5980 ft
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2287397

I will start out by saying that I have only once ridden more than 100 miles in a day.  Sorry that is not true I have now done it twice.  Problem is I have to do it again a good few times more in the coming days.

Today's ride started with a great plan to have a nice early breakfast before an early departure.  Unfortunately the service in the hotel did not match our sense of urgency so we set off at about 8:30. We had a couple of guest riders today.  Firstly we were joined by my 'brother from another mother' Christopher who was dropped off by his dad Uncle Peter.  Here we are posing under a digger with Clare.

Christopher did his best to raise the spirits of the team throughout the day by repeatedly falling off his bike whenever he came to a stop.  Luckily without too much injury!

Today was scarcely less hilly than yesterday but instead of lots of up and down there were a few very large climbs (3 Cat 4 climbs today) which were off set by lots of nice gentle descents.  By the close of yesterday I had grown to hate downhill sections as they were inevitably followed closely by an uphill.  Today it was not a problem and every actually seemed to be enjoying themselves.

One let down today was the county of Devon had not arranged a ticker tape parade to welcome home its favourite son (me).  Unless we had taken a wrong turn at that point.  Lunch was a couple of low cost steak pies from a one stop shop, we have proved really bad at planning where we stop and this needs work, today was fine because it is sunny but sitting on a grass bank in the rain would have been a bit sh*t.  The following picture shows me and was taken on the grass bank where we ate lunch.

At Taunton we were joined by our next guest rider, Peter Simpson who I have known since shortly after moving to Cambourne.  Pete moved down this way a few years ago and is friends with all the Cambourne riders so it was good to see him.

Much to the annoyance of my riding partners (sorry all) I made everyone stop whilst I took this final picture of the day, they were annoyed as it was really near the end and everyone just wanted to get there.  Having said that I am sure they will see it was the right decision when they see the quality of this bad boy.

At the finish we were greeted by Nicole (Mrs Simpson), Uncle Peter and Sarah, who is Christopher's sister and another lifelong friend, it is really good to see so many different people today as frankly after just two days the others are getting right on my tits.  Anyway enough on guest riders and the like, there is a beer in the bar with my name on it.

More LeJog blog tomorrow.

For regular updates follow me on Twitter.

Twitter: @BigBensBike

To make a donation to Prostate Cancer Research and read a bit about why I chose that charity see my page at:

Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/bigbensbike/

Day One - Sh*t got real

Day One - Lands End to Launceston - 87 miles +6911 ft / -6527 ft
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2287329

I had fond memories of Cornwall based on numerous family holidays in the 1970's / 80's.  Today all that changed.  Cornwall can stick its stupid hilly roads up its too far from anywhere ar*e.

So in summary those are my thoughts on day one.  The longer version follows....

Day one is reputedly the toughest day of LeJog with almost 7000ft of climbing (feet used as it sounds like more) packed into 87 miles.  The day started with a team breakfast at 06:30 before driving the 10 miles or so to Land's End.  The obligatory photos next to the sign followed, including this one of Clare and I that I rather like.

It was a fairly warm morning but annoyingly the UK's prevailing wind seems to have done the old switcheroo on us at this crucial time.  We set off making good pace and even managed about 10% of the climbing in the first 10% of the ride.  This probably lulled us into a false sense of security.  Later on the climbing was steeper and more concentrated than anything I had ridden before.  That said we made quite good progress to our lunch stop at St Austel.  Lacking local knowledge we were able to find a passing police man where we could get the best pasties in town (they just call them pasties round here, the local negates the Cornish pre-fix).  He and a local chap eating one while he walked suggested Malcolm Bannecutt's.

They were right to do so.  The pasties were really rather good far superior to the ones from my local Co-Op at home.  Another boost here was a kind lady walking past gave me £5.00 towards Prostate Cancer Research, my chosen charity for this ride.  Note to self:  Store it separately to my wallet and do not spend it on beer later.

The lunch stop was at 55 miles out of a total of 87 so we were in good spirits as riding 30 odd miles is easy and usually would take 2 hours-ish.  Sadly we were greeted by an endless succession of steep hills which put pay to any notions of easyness.  Still if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Keen cyclists among you, or even couch potatoes who are fans of televised cycling will be aware of the system used in the sport for categorising climbs.  Essentially they range from 5 to 1 in order of difficulty, a Category 1 climb being the toughest, excepting the 'reserved for the pros' hors-categorie which is even steeper than a Category 1.  Got it?  Good.  

Point being today's ride included no fewer than 8 Category 4 climbs.  Cambridgeshire where I did the majority of my training rides contains precisely none, in fact I don't think it even has a Cat 5 climb in the whole county!  See Strava for a more detailed  look at the route and how we got on.

The penultimate really bas*ard steep climb bought some light relief at the top when we arrived at the village of 'minions' I had speculated that they must have cashed in on the minion mania that seems to be sweeping the under fives of the country (and a lot of morons who post memes on facebook, which I agree says as much about my face-friends as it does me, love you all really.)  The following pictures shows they don't mess about in Minions, full on cash in:

I will say again, the red of our kit is not a slimming colour.

Following the climb into minions we covered the final 10 miles to our hotel relatively quickly, albeit with at least one more nasty hill to spoil things.

Tomorrow is more of the same but ends up with a relatively flat final 50 or so miles to our stop at Weston Super Mare.  We will be joined on tomorrows ride by two guest riders, Chris who is a lifelong friend for the whole day and Peter, a 15 year friend (so far) who will be joining us in time for the flat bit.

For regular updates follow me on Twitter..

Twitter: @BigBensBike

To make a donation to Prostate Cancer Research and read a bit about why I chose that charity see my page at:

Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/bigbensbike/

Day 0 - Full Circle Leave Cambourne arrive in Camborne

Day 0 - Cambourne to Camborne

This morning Clare and I packed the car then picked up David, Darren and Dan (in order of proximity to our house, not necessarily preference) for the short drive to my work where we were to meet the rest of the team and perhaps more importantly retrieve our bikes and the minibus / trailer combo that was to be our transport to Land's End.

An initial worry that a few of us secretly shared was that Carl the trip organiser was in fact an internet fraudster who having secured our payment for the trip would then disappear, luckily this turned out not to be the case and he turned up at the agreed time.  A quick team photo' of us all looking resplendent in our TTP kit and we were on the way (I wonder if we will need more than one bike between us?)

Travelling by minibus is a frustrating experience at the best of times, the top speed is limited to 62mph possibly by a fitted regulator but also possibly due to the massive bike trailer we are towing.

We had rest stops at Reading services (Burger King, Double Steakhouse Burger 7/10 for the burger, 2/10 for the chips so standard BK fare) then another stop just beyond Bristol (Costa Blueberry Muffin and a coffee, 6.5/10 for both).  At Reading services a magazine caught my eye with the cover headline "breeze your way through multi-day cycle rides", luckily I had the foresight to read this in the shop rather than buying the mag as the tips were banal at best including such gems as "make sure you eat food."

Considering the bus is mainly full of blokes I have been very impressed at the lack of farting, although secretly a bit disappointed as farts are usually quite funny.

Our hotel for the evening is not actually at Land's End, rather it is in Camborne seems a long way to go to arrive back where we started.

Talk on the bus is mainly about people's pre-match nerves, the next few days are going to be tough.

Final thought, from entering Cornwall to our destination felt like an awfully long way.  It is going to feel a lot longer tomorrow!

For regular updates follow me on Twitter.

Twitter: @BigBensBike

To make a donation to Prostate Cancer Research and read a bit about why I chose that charity see my page at:

Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/bigbensbike/

It is About the Bike

Drugs cheat* Lance Armstrong (*copyright every tabloid newspaper) once published a book called "It's not about the bike," which I suppose proved to be accurate in his case as it was mainly about the EPO.

Actually I think the title of the book is a nonsense.  In my view the reason for the massive increase in the popularity of cycling is that it gives us blokes a chance to spend our spare money on bikes and bike related accessories that we don't really need.  I am the exception to this rule and only buy vital bits of kit; for instance the carbon fibre water bottle holders you can see in the pictures below save literally fractions of a gram from the weight of my steed and therefore make it faster.

The bike I will be using for LeJog is based on a 2013 (I think) Scott CR1 Pro frame.  The frame is a thing of beauty, complete with forks it weighs in at just over 700g.  Other things which weigh 700g include a 700g bottle of Heinz Ketchup and a 700g bag of sugar.

The wheels have been built specially to withstand the rigours of this trip and generally not breaking whilst holding my not inconsiderable bulk (note: the back wheel has a deep rim section to give significantly higher aero performance and of course cost.)  For bike geeks the groupset is Shimano Ultegra 6700 including front and rear hubs.

I built the bike myself which was quite a good learning experience and means that if it all goes really wrong it is likely my own fault.  Having said that we have done thousands of miles together and all has been well.

Just before the trip I gave the bike to the excellent Paul at Cambourne Bike Solutions for a check over, he adjusted a few bits but generally gave it a clean bill of health.  Paul has been a real asset to my cycling career, from selling me my first grown up race bike to being always ready with spare parts when I remember I need them at 23:00 on a Tuesday evening!  Thank you Paul if you are reading this.

I have just noticed that Paul has a block paved garage floor.  Nice.

The only annoying thing about my bike is that at least one guy I know has Di2 electronic gears and I don't.  This makes me sad so I try not to think about it.

Anyway in conclusion sometimes it is all about the bike.  In a future Blog post I hope to discuss why it is all about the rider........On the other hand what if it is all about the bass.

For regular updates follow me on Twitter.

Twitter: @BigBensBike

To make a donation to Prostate Cancer Research and read a bit about why I chose that charity see my page at:

Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/bigbensbike/