Archive for September, 2009
Tour of Britain 2009
Posted by: Yant Martin-Keyte in Bicycles on September 20th, 2009
The Tour of Britain finished yesterday so I headed into London to watch the last stage. Now I haven’t been following it avidly, that’s to say not at all. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the number of A-grade Euro squads and an American thrown in for good measure. Now Garmin, Rabobank, AG2R and the Cervelo Test teams are great Teams to have at your race but they wont bring the top squad when the Vuelta is still running, so hopefully someone can sort that out for next year. It was good racing what I saw of it, of course its really all about the spectacle and they turned it on. Watching the Peloton fly down past number ten in the bright September sun will be an enduring life experience and not just for the cycle fans.
Spectators opposite the Horse Guards
Sunny training ride
Posted by: Yant Martin-Keyte in Bicycles on September 13th, 2009
Lucky the forecast was wrong again for the weekend, the expected 15 degrees turned out to be closer to 25 on Saturday. So I was feeling a tad over dressed in 3/4 bibs when I went out with Martinez for our last training ride for our trip down the West Country Way in TWO weeks. We had a pleasant ride despite the traffic jams for the Henley show. The ride out of Henley was a lot steeper than I was expecting or wanting after a big lunch. The contour lines were so close I missed seeing how steep the road really was. Martinez triple punctured, the four year old inner tubes almost fell apart. No problem I thought I’d grabbed a box clearly labeled 26 inch so just swap it out? Ah no I’d stored a 700c tube in that box a long time ago and there was no way I could get it into his MTB tyre. So three patches later we got going again and we have now retired both the old tubes. Everything else is dialled in with both bikes now so we are ready as we will ever be for the ride.
Quick Ridley Crossbow update
Posted by: Yant Martin-Keyte in Bicycles on September 9th, 2009
It’s been long past the four month point were I promised a review of how the Crossbow has fared. With work getting in the way I’ve not had enough time to do as much ridding or writing as I would have liked and do justice to the bike.
As I’m going to be giving the bike a good work out in the next six weeks over the hills of Exmoor and an actual race I’m going to reserve a full review till then. In the time I’ve had it I can say nothing has broken, the cables have stretched as you would expect and I’ve not had to remove the tyres. as I’ve not had a p******* in that time.
Changes I’ve made to the bike so far are SPD’s, Brooks saddle and a rack for contact point comfort and commuting. Last week I finally got round to fitting the 34tooth inner ring I had mentioned, a much easier job than I envisioned as there was no need to remove the chainset. The FSA 34t was out of stock so I’ve gone with a Stronglight ring, which seems fine, although the OCD in me is dismayed at the mismatching silverness of the ring. More importantly how does it ride? Good in a word, smooth shifts, no extra noise and as you would expect slighter lower gearing helps spin more up the hills and spread the gears. I’m pleased to have it for the hills. I’ve forgone swapping out the 12-25 cassette for a 12-27 as the gains really don’t seem to justify the out lay on a cassette which only seems available in Ultegra.
Now I have to get back to bicycle tour planning, can anyone recommend a good bicycle friendly youth hostel or B&B in Newquay?
Bike Tour of the West Country Way
Posted by: Yant Martin-Keyte in Bicycles on September 6th, 2009
I’ve been a little remiss in writing here recently, but I’ve been busy planning my first bike tour. The idea came together haphazardly when my friend Martinez asked me if I wanted to go camping in Devon for a holiday at the end of September. Now as much as this sounded promising I did think we might get bored sat around the one camp-site for a week so I suggested we do a bike tour. So a quick Google search for bike tours in Devon brought up the Sustrans West Country Way route.
The 240mile route looked ideal with good train links at either end. My initial idea was to camp, but looking at the gear required (I’ve don’t even own a sleeping bag let alone a tent) and the cost and weight involved B&B’s seemed the best option for my first tour also to bear in mind was that Martinez had at this point only ridden his 4year old mountain bike a half dozen times at this point so five nights in a tent after a hard day on the bike was not appealing for him.
The West Country Way site was a great resource in planning the trip with lots of information and inspirational pictures. I was keen to buy the Sustrans map of the tour but they are unfortunately out of print at the moment all though an other print run is expected soon. I have been searching ebay but they are going for well over rrp. So I have mapped out my route on Mapmyride.com with the deviations required for our accommodation I’ll share the maps once I’ve tested them on the ground and updated as needed. Sorting out accommodation for the route I thought was going to be a nightmare, but the Cycle-n-sleep website has done a lot of the hard work and has resolved half of our nights stay. I’m still searching for the last couple of nights at the moment. The other major logistical aspect was the trains so I sent Martinez of to the station to book our and our bikes tickets in plenty of time to get advance fares. We are starting in Bath train station and have to make our way to St Austell at the other end to get our ride home
So three weeks to go before the big day just about everything is in place, apart from decent fitness and a handle bar bag for my SLR. I want to take the SLR as the lens on my compact is just not up too the job of capturing the stunning scenery we are going to be passing and I hope to add some great shots to the WCW Flickr group, weather permitting.
Now as no form of exercise more strenuous than walking to the pub (a good thing) can be undertaken these days with out raising money for charity (a great thing) we are asking for sponsorship. The Teenage Cancer Trust are doing very good work local to Martinez and all over the country so we have decided to support them and we would be very grateful if you could too via JustGiving.
During the trip my heavy laptop will be staying at home so I will not be blogging my trip on a daily basis (unless I get Posterous working) But I will put together a full report on my return and update twitter along the way.