I'm a bit unfit. Not massively but there are some days where I just don't leave the house! I need an activity that's fun in of itself and isn't running because fuck that. What I did like about running is that doing couch to 5K gave me something of a challenge or a game to play. I'm on Strava and that's great for nerding out on maps, stats and so on but it's not really a game. I'm having to overlay my own shit onto it and that's what you have here.
I did a bunch of after-work sprints for 30 minutes - go as fast as I can with Alpine street at the end but they got boring really fast.
So I decided to start doing longer cycles like I used to with Felix. Riding semi-randomly into the countryside. I'm going to chart them here. I've been enjoying it so much that I want to do some bike packing camping one night things at some point. Or at least low fi home counties easy bike packing shit.
1. 20th July - Too Far Off Road
26.43km, 2hr 12m, 186m climbed
I attempted a standard route to Pangbourne via Caversham and Maple Durham and then back via Purley and along the Thames. I've done this a lot with Felix on the back but I went a bit wrong and up Whitchurch Fucking Hill.
This is me before Whitchurch Fucking Hill at the church in Pangbourne.
This is me at the top. My hand is shaking. My heart was beating so fucking hard that I ended up buying a heart rate monitor to make sure I don't kill myself in the future.
Here's me and The Old Warrior (named after my Dad's old motorcycle, which was much more impressive). Before getting into Bike Packing, I'm going to need to move the lock. I can't do without a lock because I nearly always end up going into a shop.
28th July - Jelly Legs
30.77km, 2hr 01m, 131m climbed
This is the ride that the Whitchurch Bastard One should have been but with an extra loop down through Theale. My legs felt terrible after this but I really enjoyed it knowing that I would be setting a distance record.
Here's me at the Thames crossing in Pangbourne. It was a scorcher of a day!
3rd August - Henley Without The Stupid Hill
33.85km, 1hr 50m, 155m climbed
My end goal is to ride to Henley up the Stupid Hill but for this one I was content with riding round the long way. I discovered there were still a fair number of ups and downs, so I am not sure I gained much. One day I'll take on the Stupid Hill but not confident about it yet.
The road riding was OK but a little bit tedious - I think I prefer being surprised by woods and the odd bit of tiny bridleway.
I prefer loops to straight there and back - so next time I'll build this into a loop. Here's me at the Henley town hall. Everyone around my was super posh and I look like bedraggled hobo.
10 Aug - Into The Chilterns
31.14km, 1hr 59m, 292m climbed
The Chiltern hills are beautiful and I've been studying an old OS map that showed that once you get out of Caversham to the North, most of the up and down is gentle. That was largely true...
Except the Google cycling mode took me down "shortcuts" that went pointlessly up and down hills. Look at the notches in the altitude graph at the top! Each one of those dips were completely avoidable. I'll be more careful in the future.
Here's me pausing by the well in Kidmore End, about halfway to Stoke Row, my goal.
I was well chuffed with getting there and feeling pretty good too. I loved the village shop, perfect place to stop.
If you take the map at the top and the Henley map, you can almost make out a loop that I want to build up to.
Then Migraines
I was doing pretty well going out most weekends but then migraines hit (combination of fatigue and moving my head in a certain way that gives me vertigo). I've had to pause and think I'm mostly recovered now so plotting my next trip. I want to go West and South but those directions are mostly big dangerous fast bloody roads. I might have to consult some cycling apps.
That's it for now! I've got this week off work and once the DIY is done, I'll be up for another ride!
Comments
I was noodling around in Strava and noticed you can do challenges. I'm going to try and do the September 200km challenge.
It's a bit more than I normally do, so it'll be interesting to see if I can hit it.
For working out where is good, Strava Global Heatmap can be useful (it's also available as an overlay on the maps in the app)
https://www.strava.com/maps/global-heatmap
...though it's work double-checking roads, as Strava has a lot of road riders, and they will quite happily bash down bigger A-roads, which is not where you want to be. South of you is fiddly due to limited crossing of the motorway and river, but opens out once you get to Mortimer (my old stomping ground). West is better north of the motorway, so you're heading in the right direction going to Pangbourne, though you'll need to head up Pangbourne Hill and out of the valley for the quietest lanes. If you can get out towards Bucklebury there are some specially designated quiet lanes which are good riding.
Finally, I have terrible news...you missed Whitchurch Hill...thats straight up the B471 to Crays Pond, and frankly I didn't go that way unless I absolutely had to. Not only is it a miserable climb, there is a ropey width restriction at the bottom with limited visibility.
Thanks for the top tips. I stand corrected on Whitchurch Hill. I have SEEN that road from toward the bottom. I will try it one day and I am not too proud to push the old warrior up if I have to.
Weirdly, Mortimer feels like a really long way but ... I've just looked it up and it's 13km away. Even a modest loop will hit my standard 30km and there aren't too many stupid hills. Tempted to attack Silchester as a cool target. I once gave someone a lift down there in the van, it feels far.
Ignore the route finding, I think it's a bit sus.
I think I do need to go further than Pangbourne at some point, I might try Tilehurst Hill now that I've been up the Chilterns.
While in Strava looking at heat maps, I spotted this mate.
Inspirational if not a little mind boggling!
To be fair it was a pretty flat route (probably as flat as you can get round here...running the flat section between the Dales and the Moors), and for about 3/4s of it I was in a group (first 80km in a fairly easy-paced group of 8, then I tagged onto the fast group for 40km before getting comprehensively spat, then a final 40km back to the start solo...unfortunately with a fairly grippy headwind. The final 20km home was miserable, as it also started to rain, and I was sin gas.
The best roads for riding around the Thames Valley are definitely away from the A4 and towns. At a certain point you'll hit a comfortable distance where you can get out of the traffic and into the quieter lanes...that's when it gets really good!
That route looks pretty similar to what I'd do
https://www.strava.com/routes/3263459446673503942
Silchester is on top of a hill (not super-steep, but a bit of a nag)...but then that means it's downhill on the way back!
A couple of good cycling cafes in Mortimer as well (I'm assuming this place is still open ). If you're stopping up at a small cafe, you don't need a D-Lock (you probably don't need anything, I've never locked my bike at a cafe stop), but a simple cafe lock will be more than enough...it stops a casual walk-by theft. If you're going to a dedicated bike stop, such as Velolife in Warren Row you won't need a lock...if nothing else you'll be able to rack up next to a £10k Pinarello that is also unlocked (Henley-vibes on the bike front round there).
Bit late posting this one because life got in the way!
15th September - Silchester
46.11km, 2hr 37m, 236m climbed
I bloody loved this ride. On the maps before I left it came out at about 36km, which I thought was a comfortable uplift from my previous record of 31. However, there were a few bridleways that would have been fun in the dry but were underfuckingwater.
Rather than plan a new route, I just headed off in a direction. While that was not as insane as it might sound, it added on a few km on the way out. It also tried to take me over the M4 at Jcn 11, which I opted to not do and cross over near Green Park. Much better.
I concentrated a lot on my cadence. I used a "click track" to get the tempo-ish and then tried to keep to that. I was surprised by how many cyclists there were out on the roads. Sure, the weather was nice (last of summer sun) and the traffic was light but there were loads and loads of cyclists. All in lycra. All on road bikes! There was my huffing and a puffing on the Old Warrior.
Here's the current configuration with new water bottle cage and a moved bike lock.
Here's me looking all chuffed right at the top of the hill. Wasn't as tired as I expected.
Since that ride Naomi went nocturnal, so I only managed one more quick look around Reading a week ago. Hope to get out this evening for a quick one!
As you get more out of town, you'll find that you live in a bit of a hotbed of cycling. There are large clubs in most towns, and there are some decent roads in the Chilterns and Windsor flats. The road running through Warren Row where the Velolife cafe is based is a very busy cycle route, linking the flatlands to the hills....of a weekend you'll see plenty of London clubs visiting. Generally you have an affluent, healthy population...and as they say, cycling is the new golf!
29th September - Up and down bullshit
42.83km, 2hr 44m, 352m climbed
After Silchester, I wanted to return to the spirit of "head in a direction and then head back ish". While that sentiment generally works, I think this time I bit off more than I could chew.
It's not that the distance was particularly long, it was the up-and-down that went with it and by the end, when I was hooning along the canal path, very pleased to get home. The video below was taken early on but pretty much summarised the whole ride up until the canal.
Keeping the cadence up is definitely working wonders - choosing my lowest gear and pedalling like the clappers works on most hills.
And with that, I crossed 200km in September! I'm unlikely to do that in October as the family commitments are already stacking up and it's the long weekend rides that really build the distance.
5th October - Fuck you, satnav!
45.61km, 2hr 55m, 401m climbed
The aim of this ride was to join together two other rides I'd done: Reading -> Wargrave -> Henley and then adding on Henley -> Stoke Row -> Reading.
Disaster struck at the start of the day - the rear tire was flat! The hole looked like a bramble from last week, so it was easy to fix but made me wary of cycling 20 miles off into the nowhere without the ability to change a tire. Off down to Evans for a spare inner tube and a pump I can carry. It meant an hour late leaving but the weather was ace!
Getting to Henley this time wasn't nearly as tiring as before. Partly because I knew what to expect so paced myself and partly because I'm much fitter now.
Leaving Henley, I went up "Gravel Hill". It doesn't look like much on Google streetview but this hill can fuck off. Fuck off hill #1. I'm proud to have got up it and I knew there had to be a hill somewhere as the Thames isn't in the Chilterns.
The next fuck off hill was "Rocky Lane", which I assumed was on its way because of the downhill section that preceded it. My legs were tired at that point but I knew Stoke Row was at the top of the hill, so wasn't too worried.
Then, another downhill took me into dodgy satnav territory, where I missed a turn or two and it took me up a completely unnecessary lane that turned progressively more rough, then narrow, then bridleway and then really narrow path that was quite wet and all uphill!
I am actually having fun at this point, even though my legs are burning and I narrowly missed slipping sideways in the mud! I knew at this point that if I had tried this ride at the start of July, when these adventures began, I would have turned home long before.
Once at Stoke Row, I was tempted to head West some more and head home from Pangbourne but time was getting on and I was hungry, so a BLT at the little cafe/shop there and I blasted home!
Looking at your Strava ride, I know exactly the place you mean. I have also accidentally taken a wrong turn at that location (going the other way, so didn't go down the dead-end lane..though being on skinny road tyres, I would have immediately turned around!). The road through Witheridge Hill is crap at best.
I've just been Google mapping around the area you were riding - the dales look absolutely stunning!
Gods Country, innit?
It honestly is stunning. I still find it weird that I can ride 5 minutes out of town and I'm immediately in jaw-dropping scenery. The Chilterns is lovely, but the Dales are just on a different scale, and far quieter.