It had to be the Avon Gorge Loop again. Anything longer would be too
much for Catherine and the kids (not to mention my mum, who I had talked
into joining us), and the Family Fiesta is just too boring. Jenny’s now
big enough to ride the trailerbike, but not for 30 miles, so the plan
was that she would swap between trailer and trailerbike while Charlie
stayed in the trailer for the entire ride.
The ride was due to start at 10:30. I wanted to start at about 10:45,
to avoid the worst of the crowds, but I thought it would be nice to be
there on time so I decided to aim to leave the house by 09:00. As
anticipated, we rolled away at 09:30. After two stops for Jenny to swap
between trailer and trailerbike, we reached the Millennium Square start
at about 10:40. After then stopping for a wee, we just about managed to
get away 10 minutes before the start of the Family Fiesta ride.
The first few miles were fairly uneventful. Jenny swapped twice more
between the trailer and the trailerbike, having started the ride in the
trailer. The bike and trailer drew a number of favourable comments. At
one point I was bent over getting something out of a pannier when a
woman stopped alongside said to her friend: “That’s nice”. I askedif
she was talking about my bottom.
I rode with a sign on the back of my seat bearing the URL
<www.nohelmetlaw.org.uk>. Mum and Catherine later commented that this
had attracted a lot of interest, but it was all among people behind me
so I hadn’t noticed.
About 15 miles into our ride, as I took the sharp left turn onto the M5
Pill bridge, the bike slipped out from underneath me. Fortunately such
falls tend not to result in injury when the bike in question is a SWB
recumbent with USS, but apparently it looked horrendous. Both kids were
in the trailer, but they didn’t seem to notice.
I rode on, but something didn’t feel quite right. It felt like I had a
puncture, and sure enough my front tyre was partially deflated, thus
explaining my debiking when I tried a sharp turn towing a heavy load. I
had enough pressure to ride to the top of the bridge, where I stopped to
change the tube. A motorway bridge has to be the least pleasant place I
have ever stopped to fix a puncture, with high noise levels from the
motor traffic and with the feel of the bridge vibrating every time a
lorry went past. Thankfully I had replaced the tyre levers in my
pannier with Tacx levers only the previous day, which sped up the tube
change quite a bit.
The ride down the other side of the bridge then gave me the
justification that I’ve been looking for to buy a Road Morph pump. I
can’t get much above 60psi with my Blackburn, which really wasn’t enough
for controlling the bike downhill with trailer attached (I usually run
my Schwalbe Marathons at 100psi). After the bridge Jenny was again
swapped back to the trailerbike, where she remained until we reached
Leigh Woods.
In Pill, the barrier that both bike and trailer had to be lifted over
last year was easily avoided thanks to a marshal directing people along
the alternative route. As I stopped near her to wait for Mum and
Catherine to catch up, I wish I’d thought to shoot a video of her
dancing as she directed cycle traffic, and wistfully saying “I want a
recumbent” every time a recumbent went past.
We arrived at the Castle Court finish shortly before 14:00, and
immediately set up camp under a tree. Shade was less of an issue this
year than usual, though, as we had a fair bit of cloud (which was a good
thing). We were joined about an hour later by Richard, Paul, Sarah,
Fred and Pollyanna, who had ridden the Sustrans ride to Portishead. We
had a look round the stalls, Jenny refused to have her face painted, but
Mummy had hers done.
By the time we started to think about leaving at around 16:00, the place
was almost deserted. It turned out that the England football team was
playing in a World Cup match, due to kick off at 16:00, and people had
apparently left early to watch it. It made for a peaceful ride home,
anyway, apart from the time when loud cheers heard from across a valley
suggested to us that England had just scored.
Jenny started the ride home in the trailer, switching to the trailerbike
when we reached the Bristol-Bath cyclepath. She was quite happy there
for a couple of miles, until Catherine, in attempting to dismount,
managed to drop her bike. The only injury was a small cut on Jenny’s
knee, but it gave her a fright and she rode the rest of the way home in
the trailer. It was starting to rain by then anyway – a very light,
very pleasant rain.
We finally arrived home shortly after 18:00, amidst a barrage of sound
informing us that England had probably just won the match. My computer
showed a total distance of 30.94 miles.
Report with pictures at
<url:http://www.colyer.plus.com/danny/cycling/ridereports/bbbr06/>
--
Danny Colyer <URL:http://www. colyer. plus. com/danny/>
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