After a less than perfect night in the van somewhere in the rural hinterland of Coventry that turned out to be sandwiched between the glide path in to Brum airport above and the Westcoast mainline and a surprisingly noisy dual carriageway, we set off in to town for the start. Continue reading “The Big Ride for Palestine – Day 1”
Category: Blog
The Big Ride for Palestine – Day 2
Northampton to Luton
Slept well and woke just in time to grab a tea and get dressed before taking the bikes down for the ride into town. Continue reading “The Big Ride for Palestine – Day 2”
Off Again…
Yes! Finally we are planning to get back in the saddle. The Winter is over, I’ve taken Genie out of the turbo-trainer and another ride with the Climate Vision riders is in planning.
This time we are part of the Rebel Riders of the Ecopocalypse and the plan is to ride from Falmouth, Cornwall to London to arrive for the week of disruptive action from April 15th with Extinction Rebellion. Continue reading “Off Again…”
First outing of the year
The sun was shining, the afternoon was free, time to unhitch Genie from the turbo trainer, and get out there.
It was ok, legs still working, gears still all ok, front brake a bit soft. Only a short one without a load (although I did forget that I has nearly 2kg of D-lock strapped to the rear carrier).
Just a brief run up to St.Stephens, down through Langore and over the Ottery, up to North Petherwin and back round home again by way of Werrington and Ridgegrove Lane.
Hit bottom gear a few times on the climbs. Dropping down into the Tamar valley the sun had dipped below the hill and lost its heat and I was glad of my windproof good blue cycle top – shout out to the techs in psychology – almost wished I had my gloves with me too.
Only 20.2km and the rolling average 13.2km/hr which seems pretty low with no load, although it was a hilly choice for a first ride of the year. Still, it’ll get better…
The Road to London
Here’s the first draft of the route from Falmouth to London with proposed stage towns. Anyone stumbling across this during Feb/March and interested in joining or joining up other rides or doing something in one of the stage towns should contact me by phone/text on 07736 741268 or email rogerco at riseup dot net. If you are part of XR and coordinating a ride you should be aware of the RebelRiders project on basecamp – or email me.
Stage towns: Falmouth depart 8th April, Lostwithiel or Liskeard or Bodmin 8th April, Launceston 9th April, Barnstaple 10th April, Taunton 11th April, Glastonbury (lunch) 12th, Frome 12th April, Newbury 13th April, London 14th April.
Out with the Amigos
Sudden realisation that there are only two more full weeks before we set off from Falmouth to London, and having been doing route planning over the weekend I find that the first two days and the fourth day look pretty tough.
Checkpoint
After yesterday’s exertions decided to repeat the North Petherwin-Werrington loop from a month ago to see how I’m doing.
No wind, overcast, not cold. But I did leave the 2kg of D-lock behind which might have made all the difference.
20.2km again, but this time with zero stopping time and a moving average of 17.0km/hr. It is actually only about 250m of ascent so somewhat less hilly than yesterday.
Solo not Amigo
Unfortunately I drove 6hrs on the motorways on Monday at a constant 70 or 50mph after which the muscle (or tendon?) at the top of the back of my calf was quite painful. In the morning I could only hobble so decided that 40km plus would be foolish and blew out the amigos ride.
Wot? No activity here for a year?
Well that’s not quite true because there was the RebelRiders jaunt to London for the XR Spring Rebellion 2019 last April, but that doesn’t appear on the front page – you can find it here.
But since then it has mostly been cycling to and fro to Gwel Dulas – 2.5miles each way and flat – which hardly merits a blog post. There were vague plans for a cycling holiday last summer but in the event the blooming dog got in the way. A few half day local rides but really nothing significant.
Maybe this summer eh?
Big Ride for Palestine 2020
In 2018 Jane, Euan and I did the Big Ride for Palestine from Coventry to London in company with some 200 other riders. Quite a cavalcade.
Unfortunately we I missed last year when there were two smaller rides rather than one big one – and none accessible from Cornwall, but Jane went up to join the London one while I dog-sat.
This year was planned to be a mass Bristol-London which we were looking forward to, but because of things being as they are the ride has been re-organised so that everyone does it independently, or in groups of up to six, but we all do the same distance at more or less the same time.
The distance is 36 miles – which is the length of the fence between the Gaza strip and Israel, and also a nice distance for a day’s ride. Most people are doing it on Saturday 1st August, but we have a grandies first birthday that day which we are not going to miss having been unable to have any contact with him for most of the past four months, so we are going for Thursday (the day after tomorrow as I write).
I’ll write separately about why 36 miles and how the situation in Gaza relates to East Cornwall, but as for the cycling Genie is in good shape having had a quiet year but her rider is probably much less fit. Certainly Jane, who has acquired a proper lightweight road bike and been doing club rides with the Widgers, now routinely pulls away from me uphill.
We’ve been out a couple of times in the last couple of weeks for 20 mile loops around North Cornwall. We have to put the bikes in the van with the dog and park up somewhere, leaving the dog in the van because we can’t leave him alone at home. This restricts us to about a 2hour ride, but I’ve managed ok so should be able to get round the 36miles on Thursday without too much trouble since we plan to stop for lunch at the Pump’n’Pedal near Okehampton.
Euan is coming up from Falmouth to join us, and also John B from Launceston is coming along so we will be four on the road.
And if things go well we will be meeting Ricky and L’Anne at lunch who are doing the distance from Torrington to Okehampton and back.