The Story Of The Ride

Here we are, ten days after our marathon, gruelling, triumphant 100 mile ride, and I'm sure all you people out there in blogland want to know how the day went.

It was a very early morning when our alarms went off around 5am - especially since we were out late the night before!  We had a light breakfast (thanks to the Ibis Hotel, Bristol Temple Meads for providing this FOC) before setting off around 6:15.  The weather was fine, better than the forecasts had been saying, though it was a bit chilly and into a headwind.  Cycle Route 4 was signposted from outside the hotel, so we knew where to go from the start.

We had to press on at the beginning to reach Bath by 7:30, our only fixed appointment of the day.  The Bristol to Bath section is on an old railway path.  PWR regaled us with the tale that his grandfather used to drive steam trains on this section, and once PWR was taken for a ride on the footplate despite not being able to walk!  The path has a deceptive gradient, and Alan's knees took some punishment trying to maintain the speed we required.  He would be on Nurofen and paracetamol for the rest of the day.

Despite one puncture, we reached the Abbey Hotel in Bath just fifteen minutes late, to find bacon sandwiches waiting for us!  Thanks to the Abbey Hotel for providing these for free, they certainly sustained us for the next stretch.  The photographer from the Bath Chronicle turned up, and we were soon on our way.

When we came to join the towpath in Bath Neil found that his suspension was broken!  Rachel's suspension had already broken a few weeks earlier when she'd fallen at Caen Hill, but this did not bode well for the towpath stretch.  A cycle shop at Bradford-on-Avon (no Northerners in sight) confirmed the diagnosis that a rebuild of the suspension would be necessary.

We reached the top of Caen Hill just about fifteen minutes behind our tentative schedule.  The very kind people at the Caen Hill Café provided us with tea and KitKats while Adrian went off in search of a nearby geocache!  Suze and Sarah, our wonderful support crew, turned up with supplies, and we were able to offload some of our thermals as it had warmed up quite a bit by now.

After Devizes the towpath gets nasty and slow.  By the time we got to the Barge Inn at Honeystreet we were quite fatigued, and welcomed the tasty baguettes on offer.  The little village was swarming with police investigating an arson incident on a barge the night before.  (Quote from Suze to the man being led off in handcuffs: "Hello?!")

Progress was steady to Wootton Rivers, where we took a pit stop at the Royal Oak (Neil had misdirected the support crew as he couldn't remember the pub's name - locals were bemused to be asked where "Wootton Bottom" is!)  We reached the summit of the canal, the Bruce Tunnel, at around 2:45, and although the terrain wasn't much improved, it was a relief to know the major climbs were behind us.

We got to Hungerford about 4:15, and our 20-minute planned break turned into a 45-minute rest with no complaints from anyone.  Neil was glum to know that he was five minutes from home and four hours from the end of the ride!  We reached Newbury around 6:15 and expected to get to Woolhampton around 45 minutes later.  However, we followed the cycle paths through Thatcham and the very good quality towpath from there, and got there before Sarah and Suze could unveil the banner!  Thanks to the customers of the Row Barge who were generous to these sweaty cyclists boasting about the 82.5 miles they'd cycled so far.

By 7:15 we were on our way again, hoping to finish the ride by 8:30.  Two punctures to Gibbo's front wheel saw to that!  Sarah and Suze were stranded at the end of the canal - not the nicest area of Reading - holding a banner and wondering where we'd got to.  Fortunately the locals took pity and filled the collection box!  We arrived to cheers, flags and bunting at 9pm - but we hadn't yet completed 100 miles!

So after catching our breath it was on for the last push, up the hill to Caversham Park.  Alan's knees were ready to fall off by now, as were Rachel's, but we got to BBC Monitoring reception around 9:30.  Neil's odometer read 99.5 miles by now, so he and Adrian took two final laps around the car park to reach the magical target of 100 miles.

Then it was off to Gibbo's for champagne, a barbecue and the award ceremony!

Tired but happy

We made it!

We left Bristol shortly after 6pm and got to the end of the canal at Reading at 9pm - then up to Caversham for a nice round 100 miles!

Photos and a longer writeup will be here soon but for now I'm too tired to write anything!

Raring to go

0535, half an hour until we're on the road. tired, didn't get to bed until gone midnight!

You can follow our progress here or on Twitter: #100locks

12 HOURS TO GO

Oh crikey, in exactly 12 hours we'll be leaving Bristol!

It looks like I've "Murrayed" the weather, now the forecast is for rain and wind all morning, clearing up in the afternoon.  That will make the All Cannings section even more pleasant (NOT)

Less than 36 hours to go

33 hours to be precise, if we leave on time!

The weather forecast seems to be coming good, if accuweather.com is to be believed: the rain doesn't look like it will arrive until 7pm, temperatures will be warm, and the wind will be mild from the north.  BBC weather is the opposite, forecasting a huge band of rain all along the canal all morning!  I'm going to believe AccuWeather for now!

Track our progress

You'll see a new map on the blog now.  This should update to show where we are on Friday.  Thanks to Adrian who's volunteered to do this!

Three days to go

Just three days to go.  The weather forecast looks poor but it now seems to be settling for a few rain showers and a steady north wind - that will be grim on the All Cannings stretch.

We have had lots of very generous donations rolling in online - thank you all very much.  Please spread the word to friends and families!

Four days to go

Only four days now until the ride.  We're down to the final stages of planning now, trying to work out where to eat en route.  Kudos to the Abbey Hotel in Bath who will be supplying us with bacon rolls for breakfast!

Friday's weather is now "rain tapering to a couple of showers" and the wind forecast has swung round to the WNW.

Five days to go

Just five days to go now.  Looking at the long-range weather forecasts, it seems we're likely to get rain - possibly thunderstorms - and wind from the east to south-east (ie right in our faces).  Whack-oh.

We might be lucky, as Saturday looks brighter, so if the forecast's wrong by a day we'll be ok.  However, if it's wrong by a day in the opposite direction, well Thursday's forecast is 75% chance of thunder!

It's going to be even harder work to do this ride with bad weather.  What's going to keep us going is knowing how much we're raising for Help for Heroes, and to do that we need you to donate at http://www.justgiving.com/100locks.

Six days to go

Six days to go.  Neil got out and rode a loop on roads around Bucklebury and Yattendon, while Paul W-R found that he needs to spend £200 on a new drive train for the bike ...

Meanwhile Help for Heroes was in the news yesterday as Prince William opened a new rehab centre for troops.  The new facility at Headley Court was funded from donations to the charity, including the money we raised through our ride last year.

Please donate!  Every penny goes to help our wounded servicemen.  Click the JustGiving "donate" button to the right or visit http://www.justgiving.com/100locks.

The Pigeon Tower

With the hottest day of the year to date drawing to a close Rachel,
Adrian, Paul G and Paul W-R thought it would be a good opportunity to
get some more miles under their training belt. Both Pauls got some
early training in with an ice cool pear cider on the train journey on
their way home from London. Although neither would advocate mixing
alcohol and cycling as an effective training regime, they did try to
claim it was part of their five a day intake. After meeting at
Caversham church, they headed west towards Pangbourne via Mapledurham.
This leg took them through some rolling countryside on a mixture of
tarmac and loose shale. From Pangbourne they turned south towards
Sulhan and then climbed the small hill up to the Romantic Folly, which
is called the Pigeon Tower. From there they continued south towards
junction 12 of the M4 and headed towards Theale via the footbridge to
join the Kennet and Avon Canal at lock no 101, Shenfield Lock. They
then headed east back towards Reading and valiantly resisted the
temptation to stop off for refreshment at the Cunning Man. Finally just
as they were arriving back into Reading on the newly laid tarmac path
they suffered their only puncture of the day but with formula 1 style
speed they had the wheel off, inner tube out, new inner tube in and
inflated and wheel back before Rachel could apply her lippy. Although
they didn't break any speed records all said that they enjoyed this
social training run.

Judges Loop

PG, Adrian and Neil spent Monday of the bank holiday weekend on another training run.  The Judges' Ride is a sixteen-mile loop around the Chiltern hills; we started from Caversham to make a 30-mile round trip.

The weather was ideal - overcast with not much wind.  We did do a lot more climbing than we'll be doing on Friday week though!  The ride seems intelligently planned though - there were only three steep climbs - two up chalk paths which were rather difficult, with lots of long, fun descents along rough paths with bushes either side!

Adrian was wearing his new techno-geek HD helmet cam, we don't know what the footage looks like yet but it does nothing for his aerodynamics!

Publicity shots

For the only time so far, we've managed to get all six of us in the same place at the same time!  So we took the opportunity to grab some publicity shots.  These are the best!

Thanks to Sarah for taking the pics!

Timings

Been working out some timings now that we have experienced everywhere between Bath and Reading - although in stages.

If we have no injuries and no punctures, push where the surface is good, take our time on the Devizes-Hungerford stretch (35 miles of the worst surface), and we leave Bath at 7:45am, we'll probably be at Devizes by 10:15 and make our lunch stop at Honeystreet around 12 noon.  After a lunch break we should reach Crofton Pumping Station around 3, Hungerford at 4 and Newbury around 5 - hopefully before the pasty shop shuts!  We should get to Lock 100 at Sulhampstead by 6:45, and reach our destination - the junction with the Thames - an hour later at 7:45.

So you can start laying bets now at how late we'll be!

Training run

Another training run this morning.  Paul, Paul, Alan and Adrian all got the train to Hungerford where Neil met them at 0720 (despite the fact that they all tried to get off at Kintbury!)  We all then set off for Pewsey.

Quite an uneventful ride there - a welcome break for a doughnut just after the Bruce Tunnel (although Al had tried to fill himself up on insects), and we arrived at Pewsey Wharf bang on 0900, just as we'd planned.  Paul R had spotted a bakery in Pewsey proper, so we decamped down the hill for coffee, bacon rolls, breakfast pasties, Wiltshire pasties etc.

Back up the hill to the canal - a little too fast for Al, whose knee then complained for the rest of the journey.  We seem to be having a spate of knee problems on this event!  We got back to Hungerford about two hours after leaving Pewsey, with a couple of pit stops en route, so that was a good pace.

Again, the towpath is pretty poor for this section.  Suspension on the bikes helps - but only four of the five of us had this!

It's now just under four weeks to the big ride.  It is certainly going to be difficult, as the towpath between Devizes and Newbury is unremittingly poor.

Please sponsor us!  http://www.justgiving.com/100locks

At lock 61 opposite Crofton Pumping Station.  The towpath is pretty much like this between Devizes and Newbury. 

Alan (front), Paul, Paul and Neil just below the Bruce Tunnel, which will be the highest point on our ride and more-or-less halfway along the route.

At Great Bedwyn there's a welcome bit of smooth surface!

Now We Are Six

Disaster!  After a physio session today Sarah's found out that her knee is in too poor a condition to risk the run.  Only six of us now!

Bath to Bedwyn

Saturday saw three of us (Paul R, Neil and Rachel) gather at Bath Spa railway station for a training and timing run to Bedwyn.  The weather was cold and damp, with a NE wind.

We set off only five minutes late, at 08:30, and promptly got on the wrong side of the canal two or three times in Bath!  The towpath swaps sides frequently through Bath Locks.  Still, we made good time to reach Bradford-on-Avon at 09:50.  The towpath along this section is wide and smooth; we took it at a leisurely pace to help Rach break her new bike in.

The towpath continues to be good quality, though not as wide, to the Caen Hill Locks below Devizes.  We reached the bottom of the flight at 11:00, bang on time - at which point Rach slipped on gravel and hurt her knee.  First aid applied, we reached the top of the flight half an hour later, where a handy cafe supplied us with more plasters.

Past Devizes the towpath and National Cycle Route 4 diverge, to rejoin much later just west of Newbury.  The difference is notable.  The towpath becomes much rougher - lumps and bumps where muddy paths have taken footprints which have been baked in the sun - and is often covered with grass, which slows the bike down and obscures the bumps.  We had had to slow down for Rach in any case, but it's doubtful that we'd have gone much quicker.  We reached the Barge Inn at Honeystreet for lunch an hour late, at 13:30, but mine genial host promptly supplied us with chilli and antiseptic wipes!

We left our lunch stop at 14:45, but the going continued to be difficult.  Only as we approached Pewsey Wharf 45 minutes laterdid we get some respite from the tiring surface.  We decided between us that Rach could go no further, so diverted to Pewsey itself and the train station.  The next train wasn't for an hour and a half.  Paul volunteered to wait with Rach to make sure she got her bike on the train ok, while Neil continued on to Bedwyn and thence Hungerford.

After Pewsey the towpath isn't much better than before, and the wind had turned into a strong easterly which Neil was riding directly into.  Fortunately the Bruce Tunnel and the summit of the canal is only 25 minutes or so east of Pewsey, and after that it's downhill.  Neil pushed hard to make up some of the lost time, and was back home in Hungerford at 17:30 - nine hours and fifty miles after starting.

In just four and a half weeks we will need to do twice the distance in an estimated thirteen hours.  Some planning is still required.  We could probably speed up on the section to Bradford-on-Avon so that we don't have to push so hard on the poor towpath sections.  We know that it takes four hours to reach Reading from Hungerford on fresh legs, but Neil's legs weren't going to get much further on Saturday!

Training

With only five and a half weeks to go until we embark on our mammoth ride, we've been starting to step up our training and scout out the route and refreshment stops.

Everyone now has a bike, which is a good start!  (Although Rachel may not have been able to get hers home from the bike shop yet).

We know that it takes four and a half hours to cycle from Great Bedwyn to Reading in ideal conditions; meanwhile Neil has ridden west as far as Honeystreet which might be a good stop for lunch.  This coming Saturday some of us (Paul R, Sarah, Neil and Alan) will be catching the early train to Bath to ride back as far as Bedwyn or Hungerford.

Who are we?

We are a team of friends from BBC Monitoring in Caversham. In October 2009 we raised over £2000 for Help for Heroes by cycling along the Thames from BBC Monitoring to the MOD Main Building on Whitehall - see http://bbcm2modcycle.blogspot.com for the full story.

This year we are setting ourselves a greater challenge. On June 11th we will be cycling the 100 miles from Bristol to Reading along the 100 locks of the Kennet and Avon Canal, in just a single day.

The team has changed; we have three novice cyclists riding with us this year. The canal towpath is narrower, rougher and generally more difficult than the Thames path, and we have the obstacle of the Caen Hill locks outside Devizes to negotiate before lunch!

We want to double the amount that we raised last year.  Please donate at our JustGiving page.