Hello Old Friends

Well I tried to slip back in unseen but without luck. Paul "Face Break" Martin saw fit to take the micky out of my name. And to think that I was going to let him have a few of my old beer glasses too. He'll have to grovel now.

It was nice to be out riding with you lot again last Saturday. Mr Green took us up "accident hill" where Mick Sutton joined previous crash victims, bomber Harris and Bob himself, on the deck in the mud and the blood and the beer. I got my nice red retro Roberts dirty and was not happy!

It was good to see MOB out looking as cool as a cucumber on the climbs: nothing has changed there then!

I hope to see some of you next Sunday.

Helmets

I've had an enquiry from another club asking do we have any rules (or views) about making the wearing of hard shell helmets compulsory on club social rides (ie not racing) and did we know of other clubs' rules about this matter. I said we didn't and I gave my opinion that I didn't think we should but it would be a good idea to canvass opinion and the experience of others more widely. What do you think?

Sunday's Mountain Bike Ride to Sidlow Bridge

Well it was a Starey ride so what else would you expect?

Would you buy a second hand bike from this gang of ne'er-do-wells captured in Norbury Park?

Exercise on the Thames

Two pics of other people taking outdoor exercise from last weeks Saturday MTB ride along the Thames to Walton. The start of a ladies race in the Molesey regatta and another of a guy on our towpath for the first time. He'd come down from Llanelli to Paddington by train with some pals that morning and they were riding back to Wales along the Thames, the Kennett & Avon canal and over the Severn Bridge. They hoped to do it in five days.

Weekend Rides 25-26th July 2009

Saturday 25th July
Horsham Nature Reserve. Organ & Dragon, Ewell at 9.00/Betchworth 9.45.
Mick Ayliffe (Ride Leader)

Sunday 26th July
West Horsley. Cheam Station South Side 9.00/Leatherhead Station 9.45. 45 miles.
Trevor Hughes (Ride Leader)

I have set up the blog now so that you can comment without signing-in to Google, just look at the blog and comment by hitting the comment link to the right of the 'Posted by...'. Type your comment in the box provided and then where it says 'Comment as: select profile', choose 'Name/URL' from the drop down menu, type in your name and then hit the 'Post comment' button, the comment will be published below automatically.

Steve

Cycling on the Cote d'Azur

Having spent last week in Nice it was interesting to see that the Tour de France was generally overlooked. I didn't go out of my way to find a bar to watch the race in, and couldn't have watched for long at €8 a beer, but you wouldn't have known the race was on!

Maybe it's down to the manifold distractions of a city by the sea, or that a french rider wasn't going to win again or the fact that, in this tourist honeypot, sport seems to be unimportant (the same could have been said at a trip to the Monaco GP about 10 years ago when we had to ask the owner of a empty bar to put the qualifying session on the tv for us).

What was great though was to see how Nice has re-imagined itself. A tram system has been put in through the heart of the city and, last week, a fleet of 900 hire bikes was launched to complement it. The Vélo Bleu bikes take their name and colour from Nice's famous and distinctive blue seats that line the Promenade des Anglais; the two initiatives together have taken a crowded, dirty, stressed and car centric city and given it back to the people.

Steve

Saturday night, Place Massena

Weekend Rides 18-19th July 2009

We are going to continue with the experiment for six weeks. I have set up the blog now so that you can comment without signing-in to Google, just look at the blog and comment by hitting the comment link to the right of the 'Posted by...'. Type your comment in the box provided and then where it says 'Comment as: select profile', choose 'Name/URL' from the drop down menu, type in your name and then hit the 'Post comment' button. I have chosen the 'Moderate Comments' option which means that I need to check and pass each comment before I allow it to be published, I will update the site at the end of each day so keep it current.

I know it seems a bit complicated but once you have done it once or twice it will become second nature!

Steve

Saturday 18th July
MTB Walton on Thames. Organ & Dragon, Ewell at 9.00/Hampton Court Bridge 10.00.
Mick Ayliffe (Ride Leader)
or
Cyclosportive Ride No1. Organ & Dragon, Ewell at 9.00.
Caroline Harrison (Ride Leader)

Sunday 19th July
Sumners, Barns Green. Cheam Station South Side 9.00/Walton on the Hill Pond 9.45. 65 miles.
Trevor Hughes (Ride Leader)

St Ybard Charade 2009

Saturday July 11th 2009

And so, the final curtain. All slumber-heads this morning, a slow breakfast followed by a frenzy of bathroom wall building and three-man-mirror putting up. At 1100 the three most useless handy-men, Micks Ayliffe & Sutton with Norman sneaked away from Bedlam on their bikes to repeat the first day's ride down the Vezere gorge at Comborn. Before they got there they took a short diversion to pay their respects at the graves of Father and son Rabe and Andre Briar, three resistance fighters “fusillees par les barbarien Nazi’s en 1944.” Denbo and Mick had stumbled across the roadside memorials many years ago and we have visited them whenever we have visited St Ybard since then. Then it was on down to the river, past the luckiest garden gnomes in the world, where alongside the bridge we found an ideal property for sale. Norman agreed it would make an admirable acquisition but said it would not be acceptable to the Lady Wife because it was too far from Tesco’s. After the climb to Estivaux, taken at a much steadier pace than on day 1, we rode into Perpezac-le-Noir for drinks at the bar and then out onto the old main road, now deserted because of the nearby motorway. Then it was round to the Lac de Poncharel to meet up with the rest of the lads who had brought along a picnic which we all enjoyed before flopping out in the shade to rest and oggle or perspire in the strong sunlight. About three o’clock those of a competitive nature retired to the café for Crepes, Cornettos, coffee and beers while we watched two hours of the Tour on Tele. Another fine day awheel completed by a refined potter back to base camp and a plunge in the ice pool which is supposed to do you good. All that remains is to take Trevor down to the Auberge St Roche in the village for a thank you dinner tonight and then up and away at sparrow fart in the morning back to dear old blighty and you lot. Make the most of your last day and we hope to see you on Tuesday for the Bastille Day celebrations.
For those of you of a measuring disposition the week’s mileage was 297 and the total climbing was 22,780 feet, the average speed will not be divulged to protect the innocent.

St Ybard Charade 2009

Friday July 10th 2009

What an excellent bit of bike riding from David Millar yesterday in atrocious weather at the end of the Barcelona stage of the tour. It’s a hard sport and he gave such a good interview to ITV after the finish which was so similar to Andy Murray. Anyway today we were up on time and down to the baker’s where we heard of a Farmers Market in Uzerche tonight and we decided to eat down there this evening. But before that the bikes offered us another day en velo au Coeur du Limousin. We started off north on gentle lanes through Corbier and Benayes to Masseret where we climbed to the Tower. The hotel there is building a new extension. Trevor offered us a visit to the top of the tower but this was declined when we found it had no lift installed. From here the Garmin took over and led us on a merry chase through heavily wooded parkland but revealed the rear of the impressive Chateau des Greniers. The next stop was at Condats-sur-Genaveix for coffee where we got on the wrong side of the proprietor when he found us wandering through his living accommodation; we’d gone in the wrong door. Then it was further across country to reach Lonzac at 1.30pm where the restaurant was fully booked with a family party and the shop had just shut for lunch. Onwards, ever onwards to Borelive, where we found a fine place able to give us a lunch on the terrace with white beer, blond beer and red wine to slake our thirsts. After an hour or so we were out on the road again to Espartignac and along the old railway track into Uzerche to watch the end of the Andorra stage of the tour at The Bowler. A successful breakaway win by Frenchman Brice Feillu of Agritubel, the yellow jersey on the back of another breakaway participant from a French team, Rinaldo Nocentini of Italy, and a superb final 2 kms from Alberto Contador all renewed our faith in the old values of the Tour de France. Bradley Wiggins is still up there too in 5th place. How much better it is to see the race on TV live instead of by way of the sanitized evening edited highlights.

So it was quite late by the time we returned to the ice cool pool for our evening freezing; Mick’s fingers were still deathly white 30 minutes after he got out. At 7.30 five of us drove into Uzerche for the Farmer’s Market which we found disappointingly low-key so we drove to the south of town to enjoy a pleasant evening meal outside. The working party who had remained home, Trevor, Martin and Paul, are still working as I finish typing this instalment of the blog at midnight. Mad or what?

St Ybard Charade 2009

Thursday July 9th 2009

It was another excellent ride today in good cycling weather. Six of us left about 1000 and took the hilly back lanes to the south to join D155 above Vigeios. Then we continued south on D3, ignoring the dive into the Vezere gorge at Comborn, to descend steeply into the old village of Voutezac where we just made the left hand turn onto the lateral road through Le Saillant to Allassac for lunch. A novel solution to the problem of getting pictures of this trip onto the blog, which had exercised the finest imported brains in St Ybard all this week, had been suggested by Professor Elliott last night. Unfortunately the silly old fool had failed to charge his camera and so his solution was not put to the full test. However just look at this and marvel.

What a load of posers! Le Vieux Pont de Saillant, Vezere.

Allasac boasted a fine town square in full sunlight, a tasty sandwich bar and an accommodating cafe proprietor who let us eat our sarnies on his terrace if we bought a few beers. All was well with the world. Furthermore our host had sited his cafe next to a photographic shop which sold Mick a camera card reader that offered a more radical solution to the pics-onto-the-blog problem for 12 Euros. Alas, this was money down the drain and has failed to resolve our difficulty.

So it was that at 1 pm we wandered off into the heat of the Vezere afternoon with very full tummies. Up a goddam awful hill that went up for several kilometres at a fearful gradient and with a very poor surface. All enthusiasm for riding a bicycle drained away in an instant and at the top we sat and wondered how many cycling careers had been snuffed out by that bloody hill. Mortally damaged we limped along the plateau to Pezenec le Noir and down to Vigeois where we managed to persuade ourselves that it looked like rain and we'd best go straight back to St Ybard rather than continue to the lake to watch the tour on Tele. A load of bollocks really, it was that hill out of Allassac that was to blame. So we were home early, about 3 o'clock, it didn't rain (of course) and the rest of the afternoon has been spent finding the click on Dave's bike, in deep philosophical discussion of the troubles of the world and despairing of transferring images off Mick's camera onto this bloody computer. The Tour will have to wait until ITV4 tonight. We shortly will eat al fresco on chicken lips and hedgehog eyebrows. Denbo had wanted to eat out in town tonight but Paul's opinion prevailed when he stabbed Den in the belly with a carving knife. See you tomorrow.