Recently in Cycling Category

The 2008 edition of the Tour of Britain kicked off today with a 10 lap circuit of London running down the Embankment from Big Ben to the Tower of London and back.

Not the official one, but a group of us headed off to Brighton from Clapham Common bright and early this morning.

In general terms, this isn't particularly exceptional. There's an official race that takes place every year in aid of the British Heart Foundation that attracts tens of thousands of competitors, but to put it mildly, I'm out of shape, so even the early climbs nearly finished me.

In my defence, I should say that my Decathlon bike only has two chainrings, and that means that steep hills still require you to turn a pretty big wheel. I need the granny ring, and I may soon look at my gears as a result.

Our route took us to the quite wonderful Fanny's Farm Shop. Yes, it sells local produce, but that doesn't do it any justice at all. If you're ever in that part of Surrey, you simply must visit.

Onwards we travelled stopping at a couple more places including Wakehurst Place which is actually part of Kew Gardens.

Finally, we reached the dreaded Ditchling Beacon. I was simply hopeless with a combination of my too large chainring and a non-stop succession of traffic meaning I soon had to get off and use Shanks' Pony to get me to the top where the view was spectacular.

I'm not sure that this cameraphone picture quite does it justice, but I didn't carry a decent camera for weight purposes, and I was in no fit state to be taking photos anyway.

From there it was a gentle roll into Brighton, although the person flying their kite right by some electricity pylons is probably very lucky if they're still alive tonight.

Once we'd dutifully reached the promenade we headed to a pub where I was tickled to see this photo, before finally heading back to London.

Overall a fun, but knackering day. I read about Mark Cavendish's win in yesterday's Tour stage on the way home.

Since Saturday was lovely, but I was indoors for too much of it, I though that some outdoor adventure would be an idea.

I quite fancied the beach, but it was blindingly obvious that thousands of others would also be heading beachwards, so I was going to have to be quite careful about where I went.

Much Googling (well - some, anyway) told me of Ringstead in Dorset. It seemed to be reachable by bike from a station, and I could get a train that wouldn't quite take me all day to reach it. So off I went, having first planned a route via my Anquet software. Sadly, a failing printer meant that I still had to pick up an OS map on arrival in Dorset.

A word or two first about the train. South West Railways 8.35am to Weybourne seemed quite empty when I first boarded it about fifteen minutes before departure. I managed to get my bike in one of the three non-reservable bike bays, and took a seat in the carriage that was designated the quiet carriage. No iPod for me on the way down then. Soon the bike bay designed for three had about eight bikes and the quiet carriage had been joined by a party of about twenty young Spaniards who weren't entirely quiet. Incidentally if you ever meet a mobile phone designer, please thump him from me, and insist that the ability to play music without the aid of headphones was the single worst thing to so far happen this century.

My Woking, the train was completely rammed, but I was pleasantly surprised by South West's legroom, and was buried in The Observer.

The train nearly emptied at Bournmouth, but I was heading to Moreton. From there it was a few miles, first down, and then up some quite steep hills until I was high above Ringstead.

I took the footpath down, having to carry my bike a bit, and was soon on a stony, but relatively quiet beach. The water was quite cold, but after a few minutes, you could swim around quite nicely. I believe the redness of my face this morning may have something to do with spending a couple of lovely hours on Ringstead beach.

Then it was up to the clifftop and the bridleway. There's a coastal path that runs much closer to the edge of the cliffs, but cyclists are taken inland a little to a well signposted bridleway that's soon enough close to the cliff edge. Despite the awful weather we've had this summer, much of the path was completely grassed over, and great fun to cycle across.

I was heading towards Dagger's Gate (somewhat disappointing when I got there) and Lulworth. It had been many years since I last visited Lulworth, and although I guessed there'd be a few people about, I was in for an enormous surprise.

As I joined the road that lead down to Lulworth, I couldn't help but notice hundreds of cars parked on any grass verge they could. These were for people who were heading over to Durdle Door. I took the steep road down into the Cove itself and soon found an enormous car park jammed full of cars with literally thousands of people embarking on the climb to Durdle Dor from Lulworth.

This is a tiny village, yet it was completely over-run by tourists. I found it hellish.

I went down to the Cove, spent literally minutes there taking in the heaving throngs, and turned around to leg it.

A different steep road out of Lulworth took me to the edge of the military area to the east, and then it was a leisurely ride down to the village of Wool, where I got a refreshing pint from The Black Bear before catching the much less crowded train back to London.

Here's the route I took:

Since I've decided to do this British Cyclosportive along the route of Stage 1 of this year's Tour de France, I thought that I better start getting into shape and putting a few miles (or kilometres) under my belt.

In retrospect, as I sit hear on my sofa with my legs up, going all the way to Cambridge for my first ride in months and months, was probably not the smartest move. The route I ended up taking (which wasn't quite the one I'd carefully planned out based on the Action 50 London to Cambridge route) was 86 km or about 54 miles.

And as you can see, it wasn't the flattest route that I could have chosen.

Anquet Maps helpfully tells me that I ascended a cumulative 770m. I don't mind admitting that towards the end, when every railway station became a massive temptation to stop into, I walked a few of those metres rather than cycling them.

A couple other things also occurred to me in retrospect. It's probably a good idea to eat a good supper the night before and a healthy breakfast in the morning. Obviously I did neither, and it was energy that I found myself running out of repeatedly. I had to top up with Coke or Lucozade Sport on more than one occassion and it's scary how few villages still actually have village shops to buy these things from. Mars bars also featured in my diet, and some bananas when I finally reached Cambridge Station - just before darkness fell, which was just as well because I didn't have any lights with me either. A nice security guard kept an eye on my bike (no heavy lock either) while I stocked up with provisions at Cambridge Station M&S.

Satisfactory that I completed the route, but boy do I need to get used to hills again.