Almost a year ago I completed the Great Kent Cycle.  I was reading my ride review to remind myself how things went last year.  Why you may ask?  Because on the spur of the moment I did it again today!  Other commitments I had disappeared so I had no excuse but to go to the ride.  As my lack of posts has indicated this year I have done very few long rides so I wasn’t sure how things would go.
As we arrived in Ashford it was spitting with rain, but …

As we approach the end of 2008 I felt I should post a short post to round off 2008 – The year of the Potato!
Cycling
Back in January I resolved to get fitter, to motivate me to this end I signed up to the Royal British Legion 2008 Poppy Cycle to Paris.  In January it seemed like a long time off – it wasn’t until September that the cycle started but I wuickly started training.  I soon bought a new bike a Giant OCR 4 (road / race bike) and almost …

I was surfing the interwebs at 6am a time when all sorts of strange things jump out at you.  One such thing was cycling safety videos.  This stuck in my mind as I drive to the train station in the early hours of the morning I regularly see a cycling commuter lacking any sort of hi vis clothing, and while he has lights on his bike he doesn’t use them despite many cars having lights on.
I saw the following and thought they we quite interesting ways to make a dull …

I couldn’t believe it was already the last day.  The final push from Beauvais to Paris.  Our pre ride instruction booklet said we would arrive in Paris at the Arc de Triomphe at 3.21pm  though there was still 55 miles to go first!
It was an even earlier start than usual!  Everything was about an hour earlier as we would be cycling longer through the morning to get to Paris for 3.21pm.  For a change we joined the 10 mph group.  This was a really interesting experience.  In the 14mph which …

A clear sunny day at last!  Not perfect though as there was a strong headwind of around 25mph.
Another good breakfast at the hotel and then a long bus back to Abbeville to pick up the bikes.  After the rain the previous day we tried to clean off most of the dirt from the bikes and re oil the chain.  Several people found punctures where their tyres had slowly gone down overnight.  My bike was ok though.  The war memorial was on the main roundabout of the town and once again …