After last week’s flat battery event – the first time in a few years of keeping a bike uncharged throughout the winter and an eye-opener to how much the alarm and other processes drains a couple-of-years-old battery – I returned with a fully charged up battery to connect up and ride in 5 degrees of an early March morning.
Below is everywhere I’ve ridden in the last 4 months. I ought to get out more often.
Tomorrow is going to be raining all day. Today is sunny but with an icy wind, an altogether better prospect for getting out on my slightly neglected bike. I wanted to go up to St Ives to see if there is somewhere nice in that old town to get a coffee and pass some time. I headed off into the mysterious (and I always think of it as swampy and neglected) region due north of Cambridge heading through Cottenham, Swavesey (even sounds weird) and Over (there are cruel jokes about Swavesey people devised by Over dwellers), Rampton (sounds like the name of a high security prison for mad offenders) but for a mysterious reason decided to head in another direction instead of find St Ives. The sun was bright but dazzling. The whole trip was 42 miles and the temperature a chilly 7 degrees.
There’s not that much time at the moment that coincides with good weather to ride and even do some slow speed work. Here’s my slow moves through the car park north of Cambridge. I had no idea that Garmin Basecamp would let you look at graphs of speed and single out a piece of a trip.
Here’s the whole trip.
Now that the weather has turned nasty, getting out for rides starts to be tricky. A couple of weeks back to thought I would ride through the villages that look so pretty from the train: Stansted Mountfitchet, Newport, Elsenham, but strangely from the road they are disappointing and the roads are also uninteresting.
screenshot from Adze
Yesterday I had SBW fit auxiliary lights to the bike. Something about the way the headlight comes on has been changed. I haven’t worked it out yet but the new lights are good (despite what some seem to be saying in discussion groups).
auxiliary lights on Belinda
The weather turned from bright sunshine on the way there to dark windy and raining on the way back – in honour of increased visibility. The journey is three miles longer via the A10 but much nicer that the A1(M).
Journey on Triptrack.org
There are so many things to do at the weekend when I am in Cambridge. My usual delights are getting stocks in from Arjuna and wandering in town. This morning was sunny against all forecast expectations and I got out on the bike. Since seeing the curious statistic saved by the bike’s computer that my average throttle opening was 11% I have been wandering what would happen if I opened it to 100%, so I headed down to the A14 towards Bury and Ipswich and hoped for an empty road to try it. Sadly there was heavy traffic for a Sunday but I tried all the same. But I never actually made it. I found myself moving at between 95 and 100mph within a few seconds of this action and still accelerating fast so never made it to 100%.
Bury is very different to Cambridge but it is buzzing on a Sunday though not nearly so cosmopolitan. There’s a small section in one of the town car parks for motorbikes so I snuggled up next to a Triumph Tiger Explorer and came to the conclusion it was better looking than the 1200gs, such is the nature of desire and disatisfaction, then grabbed a coffee in Costa (no cake after my weighing scales shock this morning). On the way home I shouldn’t have asked the GPS to send me back. I headed off on some nice roads to Mildenhall and a little further but ended up back on the straight but speedy road home before I knew it.
Once back in the garage I tried to work out yet again where to fit the electrical wizardry I bought for the bike a while back (PDM60 module), the little box of cleverness that you can attach all other accessories, like auxiliary lights or other sockets to. There is no room for anything on this sleek and economical for space bike. There has to be a solution.
9th August sailing home
I’m sailing home. It’s 10.30 UK time and we have just left Caen headed for Portsmouth. Today everything went according to plan. With the help of my two beefy helpers we hauled Belinda out of her garage, packed up and I headed off from Ile de Re at around 10.30. Getting up to Caen, all 300 miles (really 280 according to the bike’s clock), was easy. There was mostly little traffic, petrol stations where I needed them and pleasant enough places to stop, rest and get something to eat and drink. By 6.30 I rode into the centre of Caen and looked round it’s cathedral and sat in the pleasant shade of the castle watching the people come and go, before returning to Belinda and driving the twenty minutes or so out to the port. Her cruise control was useful on the 130kph speed limit motorways with little traffic. It was a beautiful evening as I arrived up in Normandy. I arrived around 7.30 pm in time to eat some passing fish and chips at the terminal to save searching for something to eat late once on the boat.
In the queue for the boarding I had the usual interesting conversations, first briefly with a young guy in an Audi who told me, sitting on the bonnet smoking a cigarette, that he was a jockey and had come to France twice in the last week to ride a horse, coming 4th and 5th in his races. I said that seemed not a bad result and he said at least he didn’t fall off, three people had fallen in the last race he rode. He was rather flouncy and I imagine the combination of youth and a highly rewarded job are likely to lead to this (I was thinking of footballers). Then, more interesting, after I had joined the five other people on bikes, I talked to a man who shared with me all the same anxieties about manoeuvring big bikes in tricky situations, like gravel and sloppy ground as well as similar experiences with the IAM. Then we were told to ride on. They pack our bikes closely together, practically touching which feels uncomfortable. Once showered I bought an uncharacteristic pint of Stella (it seems the only drink that would be right) along with a couple of cigarettes out on the deck watching, with a dozen other passengers, the ship moving away from the now dark harbour. I observed that English men have problems with shorts, many ill chosen and not matching a slightly formal top half. I am pleased with my trousers from Ljubljana. So, all is good, and all went well: campsites were all good, weather was perfect and there were no disasters with the bike, which performed effortlessly well. But as one or two of us said in the queue, roads in France are a bit boring from the bike point of view. A couple of guys had ridden up from Alicante and we all talked about how enjoyable the roads in Spain are.
Do I have any thoughts for a next trip? I remember after last year I felt I had got a few things wrong, but this is different because everything did go so well. I think the main ingredient was taking the time to find and book small, carefully chosen campsites. Their friendliness made an enormous difference, and for the most part I think they attract a more interesting bunch of visitors.
So tomorrow is the familiar and rather heart sink journey clockwise round the M25 from the A3 round to the A1, then dropping in somewhere on the way home to pick up some champaign to celebrate H and I’s 31st wedding anniversary. So far, nearly an hour into the channel, the crossing looks like it will be smooth, with hopefully a good night sleep.
Later
For the first time my circulation on the M25 was uneventful and I arrived home, after 140 miles riding today. Here is the trace of the journey homeward.
