The Buttons of My Mind

First ride for three weeks and after the excesses of Xmas. This also gave my sore leg a chance to rest, doctor reckons it was muscular although thought initially it might have been a hernia in my groin region. It has been very painful, but is well on the way to being AOK again, although still not 100% cycling doesn’t seem to make it worse or hurt it. Table Tennis does though.

Anyway, boy this was a cold one. Absolutely blinking freezing. The first really cold winter weather we have had for several years was close to its peak on this Sunday morning. My brother-in-law drove to my house and his car was indicating an outside temperature of -5C. At work on the Monday I checked what our metsite had recorded and they had an overnight minimum of -7.6C and a recorded temperature at 9am of -6.9C! We were heading for Wallingford that morning!

We headed off on my familiar commuting route to Wallingford via Wittenham Clumps, it would have been close to 9am when we arrived in Wallingford where I now know it was -6.9C. No wonder my water bottle had frozen solid!

We were heading for Christmas Common and along the Chiltern ridge towards Lewknor. So from Wallingford we cycled through Crowmarsh Gifford and past Ewelme to Sliding Hill to Swyncombe. Before the hill we saw half a dozen Red Kites fighting over some food in the field next to the road, we stopped and watched for a few minutes. The hill was a very straightforward climb and much easier than Watlington Hill I had cycled before. Once we got to Cookley Green I took us on a slight detour to the top of Britwell Hill and a trigpoint I hadn’t logged before (sad I know)!

Any brief stop in the journey quickly allowed our bodies to cool though and shivering we headed to Christmas Common past the Tree Barn where a few weeks earlier we had bought our Christmas Tree. This road along the top of the ridge is lovely and offered great views down towards Oxford over the frozen landscape. We crossed the M40 at the Chiltern Cutting and over the old A40 London route. Down the steep hill wary of ice to Kingston Blount. We needed to recross the M40 and I was pretty sure the old route to Lewknor went through an access tunnel and I was right. A nice way to avoid negotiating Junction 6 of the M40!

Lewknor is when my foot froze, they had been going numb for a while but my left foot was now a block of ice. Everything else was fine, feet were a problem. We cycled through Wheatfield and Stoke Talmage and had a brief stop for a kitkat and a stamping of feet near Clare. My right foot thawed a little but removing our gloves meant our fingers quickly became cold and sore when we restarted. We had decided to head for the Waterfront Café at Benson for a coffee and a warm up, so we hurried through Brightwell Baldwin and Ewelme to our destination. It was around lunchtime so we had a nice snack and warm drink and warmed ourselves a little. Our feet stubbornly remained numb and frozen though!

The ground was still white and it was cold restarting but with renewed vigour after lunch we were soon back in Wallingford and cycling back to my house using the other half of one of my commuting routes via East Hagbourne and Didcot.

The break from cycling hadn’t effected my fitness at all and I felt strong. It was cold though and that was really beginning to bite just before lunch and I’m glad we had a break and something to eat.

Distance :: 56.24 mi
Time :: 4h29m06s
Average Active Speed :: 12.54 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

A bit of a last minute decision to go for a ride with my brother early on Sunday morning. We decided to meet in Moreton-in-Marsh and he had listed a tentative set of villages to aim for and I quickly knocked up a route on Run.GPS to follow late the previous evening.

We headed NW from Moreton to Batsford and up Dorn Hill to Draycott continuing on to Chipping Campden which is where our planned routes began to diverge and it all went a bit wrong! I thought we were aiming to cycle through Broadway going down and back up the steep hills, my brother planned to bypass the village and go via Broadway Hill. I had planned to go down Willersey Hill to avoid the main road but we missed the turning as my brother thought we were heading to Broadway Tower! I think we should have maybe worked out where we were going and I shouldn’t have done a Run.GPS route late at night.

We ended up at the top of Fish Hill on the A44. I was a little ahead and there was a big congregation of motorcyclists at the top of the hill, I turned right and headed off to Broadway not knowing that we could have gone straight on to the tower. It was too late then, I was committed (at 35mph) to going down Fish Hill! Which was fun! And Broadway is pretty!

Through Broadway we of course had to climb back up the ridge which we did via Snowshill, a decent steady climb and hill training is good! We then followed my brother’s route and I ignored Run.GPS. There weren’t any villages to cycle through but I did bag a trigpoint on top of Custdean Hill on the grass verge. We cycled close to Temple Guiting and the Cotswold Farm Park. Past Condicote, Longborough and Sezincote to Bourton-on-the-Hill. We were back on the A44 for the brief steep drop back into Moreton-in-Marsh.

A good ride in cool, calm conditions with one slip up that gave us a nice climb. Discrepancy in distance is due to me messing up the start/atop button in Run.GPS and missing the first 6mi of the recording!

Distance :: 23.65 mi (GPSr track is 29.72 mi)
Time :: 2h03m43s
Average Active Speed :: 11.47 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Commuting cycle to work on my now regular 17.5 mile route except for an added tour of Wallingford on the way in which added on a couple of miles! Weather was cool and clear.

Distance :: 19.44 mi
Time :: 1h20m46s
Average Active Speed :: 14.44 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Distance :: 17.26 mi
Time :: 1h14m58s
Average Active Speed :: 13.81 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

This was a good ride, the weather was a huge improvement over the previous week’s. Sunny, cold and little wind. I headed north from home through Abingdon town centre and out towards Cumnor on the B4017 through Wootton. I crossed the A420 at Bessels Leigh and climbed steadily to Cumnor and rejoined the B4017. During the fast descent to Farmoor and past the reservoir I remembered I had to cross the Swinford toll-bridge and I had no money with me. I hope cyclists were free otherwise I was going to have to blag my way across. It was free!

I cycled into Eynsham and turned southwest on the B4449 as far as Sutton where at last I could join quiet country lanes. Sutton was the birthplace of my paternal grandfather and he lived in Sutton and Stanton Harcourt as a boy. There are several relatives buried in the churchyard in Stanton Harcourt. Just a short distance later I cycled through the tiny hamlet of West End which was where my paternal grandmother lived as a girl. I continued along the long curve through Northmoor and into Standlake.

A short distance on the A415 followed before I turned towards Aston. I turned off this road onto a very beaten up road to Old Shifford, more a farm track than a road in places, a bit rough and muddy but isolated and pretty.

The road then had an excellent new surface alongside the Great Brook, a side channel of the Thames, this was an idyllic stretch of lane cycling. Probably the best bit of the ride. I turned south onto the Buckland Road which was pretty busy and to Tadpole Bridge where I took a breather and found Flush Bracket 112 and took photos. The only real hill on the entire route into Buckland was next but pretty easy, didn’t need to drop to the granny cog for this one.

After Buckland I had to cross the busy A420 again, took a while for a gap in the traffic to appear so I could scoot across and to Charney Bassett. I was onto roads that have become familiar now, I used the handy bridleway bridge at Southmoor to recross the A420 and the secret tunnel at Fyfield to go back under it again!

I was cycling well as Tubney, Frilford Heath, Gozzards Ford and Shippon followed. A small distance of town cycling through Abingdon was left (isn’t it odd how as soon as you get to the towns cars no longer give you any room when they pass, yet in the country most follow and pass slowly and carefully). I used the NCN route on Peep-O-Day Lane to get back to Sutton Courtenay.

My longest solo ride, nearly 50 miles when I add on the bits that GPS-Sport decided not to record. I really enjoyed the latter half of this ride, the B-road cycling early on was less good but necessary to get to the good bits.

Distance :: 46.17 mi
Time :: 2h58m08s
Average Active Speed :: 15.55 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

I had a 50 mile route planned for this Sunday but the weather was so atrocious that I quickly altered my plans and took a 30 mile moderate route out of my Philips book of cycle routes. I knew the wind was from the north so I picked a nearby route that had most of the north component at the beginning.

I drove to Lambourn on the Berkshire Downs and parked up. It was sleeting quite heavily, the car was telling me it was 3ºC outside. I sat in the car for a few minutes and then decided to go for it. It was cold. The first few miles uphill to the Ridgeway into the wind were pretty tough, the sleet stung my face, the roads were flooded, it was pretty dull (I had my lights on). Once I went down Blowingstone Hill and across the B4507 to Kingston Lisle it wasn’t so bad. In the Vale of White Horse the roads are flat and the wind was less of an issue. The sleet started to ease too. I soon cycled through Uffington and onto the Longcot road where I made a bit of a mistake. The railway underbridge was flooded with a few inches of water and I should have slowed down. My left foot got sodden and almost straight away my toes started to go numb! No matter the remaining section to Shrivenham was pretty easy and then I turned south and had the wind behind me. Through Bourton and Bishopstone on small lanes was pleasant enough, the sleet/rain had almost stopped. The steepest ascent back onto the downs south of Bishopstone followed, a fairly long ascent but not too bad.

I was blown through the tunnel under the M4 and cycled to Aldbourne. This is when the sleet started to get heavy again. I turned onto tiny lanes which took me uphill to Marridge Hill, these lanes had grass in the centre and were basically flowing rivers either side. the descent I took carefully through the flowing water under the trees there was little tarmac visible as the road was covered in leaves mud and grass!

At the bottom I turned due north for the final 4 miles back to Lambourn. These were the hardest most miserable few miles of cycling I can remember doing. The wind was blowing straight at me, the sleet was heavy, the roads were past industrial sites, uphill and over the M4. My face stung with the sleet and I started to feel cold. My feet were numb and my lower legs started to sting too. I was counting down the distance to the top of the hill above Lambourn where I could freewheel, teeth grittted back into the town.

I was soaked but thanks to my windproof jacket my top half was warm and dry. Without that I don’t think I would have made it, best £105 I’ve ever spent on clothing! I got into the car and I could see on the windscreen that the precipitation was more snow than rain, I thought I must have been mad to cycle in that, I was probably right!

Distance :: 31.38 mi
Time :: 2h20m16s
Average Active Speed :: 13.42 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Usual commuting route with an added loop at the end of the morning through Wallingford which adds about a mile to the total distance. On the way home I was really cycling well so added on a loop via Drayton and Milton which adds about 1.5 miles to the total distance. Really noticing the fitness improvements now.

Distance :: 18.13 mi
Time :: 1h14m27s
Average Active Speed :: 14.61 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Distance :: 18.72 mi
Time :: 1h17m04s
Average Active Speed :: 14.57 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

 

The morning ride to work was glorious, the Sun was just rising and surrounded by the Chilterns and Berkshire Downs it was beautiful. The wind was behind me too! You can see the difference in average speeds between the morning and evening due to the wind! It was pretty strong but I did my usual 17 miles route to and from work.

Distance :: 17.16 mi
Time :: 1h06m00s
Average Active Speed :: 15.60 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Distance :: 17.25 mi
Time :: 1h13m44s
Average Active Speed :: 14.04 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile