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I will get to the hill in a minute….

I decided on something different for my Sunday morning ride, I opted to ride up to Horton Tower . Now I have ridden this route from my house which gives me a 30 mile loop, problem is 12 of those miles (6 to Colehill and 6 back) are on the road (in fact it is probably a bit more than 12 miles as there are a couple of road section to link the Bridle paths etc.) and to be honest I find a ride that consist of more than a third road riding to be a bit boring. So I opted to drive out to the start of Canon Hill Plantation at Colehill. I was a wake early so I waited till 6am and then got up and got myself ready and headed out to Colehill.

The first thing I will say is that it was dam cold at 7:30am this morning, the first section is a ride down the fire road by the time I got to the bottom I was ready to stop and put my rain jacket on I was that cold. But once I started to pedal I started to warm up and then the sun came out and I was comfortably warm for the rest of the ride.

My bike at Horton Tower

That dam hill, there are three hills on this ride (four if you include the road one) and I can clean two of the three off road ones without a problem. The one I fail on is not the steepest as that one is in the last mile of the ride. It is not the longest as that is the hill from the forest gate to Horton Tower. The one that I fail on is the one at Remedy Oak Golf Club (if you watch the video on their web site, you will notice the big posh front gates and the drive beyond, you ride up that drive as it is a bridle way, they don’t tell you that in the marketing spiel!!). I don’t what it is, like today I was already for it I dropped it into a low gear right at the bottom ready to grind my way up the hill, my legs took one look at the hill and quit! You take the hill virtually from a standing start as there is a large mound of dirt and a gate to get past then a slight incline through soft gravel and then the climb. In fact today was the best I have seen the hill, it looks as though they have done some form of grading on the hill as the small ravines and large stones that were there last time have all disappeared. I would not of been able to ride it one hit as I met a van coming down the hill as I walked up it. I walked up to a little plateau and then started riding again, but had to stop again as the van came back up the hill (apparently he was part of the clay pigeon shoot that was going on at the top). I will clear this hill one day.

While I was washing and preparing the bike upon my return I found I had broken yet another spoke on the rear wheel (well the ally nipple), really need to sort this wheel out as that is now the 6th spoke\nipple I have broken in 4 weeks.

Tomorrow night is weigh-in night I am hopeful that I have done ok (four ride this week should count for something).

For once I have something good to say about the Monday night weigh-in, last night I reached a milestone that has been long overdue, I broke the 16 stone mark, 16st 12.5lb to be exact, a loss of 5lbs. I was expecting a loss but not that much, the down side I have now is I have to ensure that I stay on the straight and narrow this week so I don’t put weight on this week and lose the gain I have had (which is what I am prone to do after a big weight loss. I guess making a pig of myself last night was not the best idea then, at least I have a week to work it off.

I have just swapped the rear wheel over from the Cannondale to the Whyte (fortunately they are both Mavic 717 rims with Hope Pro2 hubs). To be honest the Whyte wheel is not looking to good, I found a another broken spoke (a third) and this one had broken the shoulder off the nipple, it was still stuck in the hole in the rim and it was only when I was checking each spoke that it came away in my hand. Several other spokes felt loose but that maybe because the wheel is out of true, have to wait till see what the LBS says.

In my very infrequent “what dead animal have you seen when riding” column, on Sunday I saw a dead Otter, to be honest I have never seen a live Otter in the wild only in zoo etc. It was at Parley Cross roads a busy local junction, about half a mile from the river. It had obviously had been run over and either crawled of was picked up and dropped onto the grass verge. To be honest I did not know that we had Otters in the area.

Finally another picture from my gallery

Kite buggy racing at Westward Ho!

Got back from my ride this afternoon and as I got off the bike to open the back gate my eye were drawn to an odd lump on the rim of the rear wheel. On closer inspection it turned out to be the broken tip of a spoke nipple, a first for me, all the spoke I have broken in the past have been on the elbow of the spoke on the hub end. Not sure when it broke as there was no jumps or heavy landing (or landing for that matter) on to-days ride, the only thing I can remember is hitting on tree root a bit hard with my butt still on the seat (caught me un-aware). Checked the wheel and there is a little buckle in the wheel so the bike is off to CycleFix in the week to have a new spoke and the rear wheeled trued and I will probably get them to check the gears over, I just can’t seem to get them running without sounding like a bag of nails, the gear changes up and down front and rear ok, there is no slipping or anything but the gears just do not sound right.

The ride this morning was a hard slog, my legs were still suffering from yesterdays ride and with mud everywhere it was a slog, I did my normal Throop loop and tried a couple of new paths particularly in Ramsdown Forest as the normal route will be under water, so I have now opted for a winter route and will wait till the drier months to arrive next year before I get back to the summer route. Apart from the slog through the mud and the spoke it was uneventful.

Tomorrow night is weigh-in night, the week has been so-so food wise so will have to see what the scales say. Hopefully I have a day off this coming week so will try and get a ride in somewhere, depending on the weather.

They are three things that normally happen on one of our rides, well it seems normal as in they seem to be happening everytime we go out lately. The first was the wife fell off her bike, not once but twice and I missed both occurrences, I just heard the scream from behind me. The first off was while negotiating a narrow mud filled path, I managed to get through, the wife got stuck and in her attempt to get through she bit the dust or rather the mud. The second one was a bit more spectacular by all accounts, rolling down a deeply rutted track the wife got the front wheel caught on the edge of one of the ruts and well, were not sure but it looked like an over the handle bars job based on where I found her sprawled on the floor and the bike on top of her.

Our second normal occurrence, is mud. We must have been around three quarters round the route before we hit the first mud (where the wife fell off first time). It was deep clay type mud and it looked like they had run the grand national along the track, it was wall to wall (or fence to fence) hoof divots. It was just a case of trying to ride through or find the driest path to wade through. It really has made a mess of the path through Ferndown forest and up the path toward Horton Tower. I can’t see the path to the tower improving when it has dried out, as it will be deeply rutted with the hoof divots.

Finally the third happening, was……………..I broke my bike again, a another spoke snapped on the rear wheel, never noticed until I was washing the bike down, I am not happy and will be penning a letter to Cannondale and tell them exactly what I think, not just about the spoke problem but the entire bike. I will let you know the response (if any) I get.

The ride itself was very enjoyable, only 12 miles but with less than 20% of it on roads, we had everything from wide bridle ways grass tracks, single dirt track and the amount of hill we went down did not seemed to be matched by the equivalent amount of hills going up even though we started and finished in the same place (pub car park). The weather was sunny from the start and although cold for the first few miles it soon warmed up. We finished a nice ride off with a drink and sandwhich at the Horton Inn although we did look a mess walking into the bar covered in mud with all the families there for an early mother days lunch!! We did the decent thing and sat out side in the sun and ate and drank and very nice it was to.

Info on Horton Tower can be found here

Here is a couple of pictures from today

Looking down the track through the trees

Horton Tower

Horton Towers current residents

Apart from a broken spoke this mornings ride was a good ride, did the route I normally do on Sunday (have plans for tomorrow), wife normally comes with me on Saturday and she was happy to go round the Throop loop.

I must remember to sort myself out before I leave in future, I had stopped three times before we even did a mile. First was to pull the polar buff over my ears, then it was to adjust my saddle height, and then it was to put headband on (my forehead was freezing).

Didn’t take long for us to warm up, once we hit the first field along the river, churning through all that mud, soon it was clinging to the wheel like the proverbial to a blanket making the bike feel twice as heavy. When we hit the gravel path sections the mud was flying off the wheel in all directions, had to remember to keep my mouth shut for fear of swallowing a lump of mud.

At one point of the ride we go along a narrow path, it is probably not much over 3 feet wide, with a tall wire fence on one and side bushes, trees and bramble on the other. Half way along there a tree stump at handlebar height that sticks out a bit into the already narrow path and it draws you in. Well I shouted at the wife as I went past it to remind her, next thing I here is a scream from behind me. I didn’t have to look round to guess what had happened, once I stopped and got off the bike (which is no mean feat in such a narrow area) I see the wife’s bike is horizontal on the floor, her left leg between the bike and the floor and the wife sat on the frame, in essence she could not get up. It took several minutes to extricate her from the frame.

I also found that my seat height had slipped since I had adjusted it at the start of the ride, so a quick tighten and a re-adjust and boy what a difference!! Up until then my knee was starting to hurt, but once I reset the seat height the ride was a whole lot different and the pain I had been feeling started to go. My butt is becoming accustomed to the new saddle (a Charge Spoon).

When we got back to the Hurn road, the wife headed for home and I headed for my second lap around Throop, I had just got into the first field and I heard a distinct ping from the front of the bike. I stopped and found there was a broken spoke on the front wheel my 4th spoke to break since the end of December. I took it steady for the rest of the ride. Fortunately I was able to get the wheel over to CycleFix who fixed it while I waited.

At the end of the day it was a good ride, a tad under 21 miles. Hoping for another good distance tomorrow so that Mondays weigh in is a good one. I have been pretty good eating wise this week so looking to get back on target ( see the Count Down page).

Not sure where we are riding tomorrow, have a few options and as daughter is taking the son out for the day and then he is staying over at the in-laws tomorrow night we don’t have to rush home.

Apparently there is something special about tomorrow that the wife says I better not forget or else???