What happened to 2014?

So I admit it has been quite some time since my last fairlyweatheredcyclists post, but I've been busy!!

On 21st April the shippers arrived at our house in Montreal and packed up all our worldly goods ready to load onto a ship heading back to the UK.

On 22nd April Stuart and I took our two remaining suitcases and headed off on an adventure!  

Two months touring round the west coast of the USA.  Sadly not much cycling involved, but it was a trip worthy of its own blog!  We had a brilliant time and you can read about it here

http://9x90dayplan.blogspot.co.uk/

There is also the fly-by video



 

On 1st July we arrive back in the UK, both a little bit anxious as to whether we would settle back to life in the UK after 5 1/2 years abroad.

In our shipping we have 6 bicycles - two town bikes, two touring bikes and two road bikes.  Apparently the correct number of bicycles to own is N + 1, where N is the current number of bicycles.  However, Stuart breaks this rule with an unauthorized sale of the two town bikes on eBay!  We are now N - 2.

 

 

July is a busy month with unpacking and sorting our lives out.  We do however manage a couple of lovely rides to Potten End for coffee with some of the Verulam cycling club.  These are mid week rides which will soon be lost to me when I return to work on 1st August.  This is me at the Potten End Garden centre which is also a lovely tea room.

Over the summer we manage some great rides at the weekend.  The weather is very kind to us, August was a bit soggy, but on balance much better English weather than we remember.  I hope this summer wasn't a fluke!

Notable rides were:-

Goring to Christmas Common

We stayed overnight at the delightful Swan Hotel in Goring.  Great location, lovely evening and this meant we were ready to ride first thing

For this ride I had attached my Sony Active cam to my helmet and set the camera to take a photo once every 10 seconds.  Here is the video that I loaded to YouTube.

I was trialling the mapmyride app (shortly before switching to Strava) so I also have map of the route, which was 53km and bloomin hilly.

 Princes Riseborough to Hambledon

Definitely the most picturesque ride of the summer.  57km and incredibly hilly, 710m of climbing overall

Now I am using Strava and this is the route

 

 

Although this was the prettiest ride of the season, it was also the day that was the closest I have ever come to dying.  Riding along the narrowest of country lanes, single track and no more, I approached a very sharp blind corner.  I could hear a car approaching at very high speed. I couldn't believe that it would take the corner at high speed, but just in case, I squashed myself into the hedgerow.  The car flew round the corner without slowing down, spotted me just a few feet ahead and slammed on his brakes as fast and as hard as he could.  It was very narrow, he obviously thought he was going to hit me.  Fortunately my preventive measure of pressing up against the hedgerow meant that he just missed me, but his car didn't actually stop until he was about 10 feet past me.  If I had been cycling along just a few inches further into the road he would have slammed into me.   I turned the air a vivid shade of blue with the torrent of abuse that I hurled into the back of his car, he drove off very quickly. 

 

Canal tow paths into London

August bank holiday Monday and we had decided to use the canal tow paths to cycle into London.  In traditional British style the weather on the bank holiday Monday was torrential rain, but we weren't deterred and we had a great day!

 

Aside from the trips mentioned above, we have explored many routes local to us.  What we hadn't realised when we went away was that our home in the UK is actually located in a fabulous region for cycling,  There is a lifetime's network of country lanes to explore and if we get the wet weather gear sorted we are going to have a lot of cycling fun!