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!