The view from my saddle
A few weeks ago I completed my first attempt at Everesting on Bacombe Lane, a gentle slope averaging only 5% situated outside the sleepy town of Wendover in the English Home Counties. A mere 0.73 km bottom to top, it has a dead end, large houses lining one side, four handy street lights and three speed humps as the […]
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My Kinesis Tripster ATR has been sporting a pair of TRP Spyre Brake Callipers for a couple of years now. Ridden mostly off road, spared no amount of mud, grit and water, It’s been enough time to get a feel for their performance and to figure out how to get the best out them. […]
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I’m one of the approx 300,000 people in the UK affected by Inflammatory Bowel Disease ( Crohns and Ulcerative Colitis). Ostensibly this has bugger all to do with cycling. But, actually, it does in my case. It has a lot to do with it. Surely though, this is a private matter. The subject of bowels, […]
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I have a lovely wife, ever discerning and helpful. I “look like an Elf” when I wear Lycra shorts, apparently. A comment from which I may never fully recover but a fair one considering how my legs look like knotty string. I’m thankful though, it came from her before it could be shouted from the […]
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The Surrey Hills Gravel Cross event took place this weekend….without me. Damn it! No gravel bike this weekend, a broken Kinesis Tripster thwarted my plans and had me wondering what to do with myself. As it happens an enforced rest was, perhaps, no bad thing. Work has been a relentless sweat fest recently. Long neglected […]
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A dancer does, I believe lurk within all of us. Keeping it locked up in an inner cage is the sad scenario for many, me included. The keys to open the cage tend to be alcohol or drug shaped. The ensuing rampage is not a pretty sight. I have long since abandoned the idea […]
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After much anticipation I took the long drive up to the North Yorkshire Moors last weekend. My purpose, to ride the Yorkshire True Grit 2018 off road cycling event. Sixty gruelling miles through a surprising variety of landscapes, on a wide selection of surfaces unified, for the most part, by their bumpiness, looseness and the […]
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Barnoldswick is a small Lancashire town, though I’d bet the townsfolk prefer to identify as being Yorkshiremen and women, the town was, in fact, in the West Riding until 1974. Despite a small population Barnoldswick carries the torch of a great Northern manufacturing tradition, being home to some big hitters including Rolls Royce, Silentnight Beds […]
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Tonight, I’m not tucked up and knocking out the ZZZ’s. I’m up writing this post instead. And, that’s because I’m on fire. Not in a good way. More of a ‘so damn sore I don’t know where to put myself’ way. According to Wikipedia Target Fixation is “an attentional phenomenon observed in humans in which […]
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A tremendously annoying click, click has been emanating from somewhere around my feet recently. It has been driving me nuts. The noise only appears when I’m pedalling and stops if I just pedal lightly. I was suspecting the bottom bracket to be the culprit until someone suggested the pedals. As the bottom bracket is new […]
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