Beautiful day today, and although the Meteorological Office had forecast rain for the early evening, they had withdrawn their threat by this morning. So I consumed a leisurely breakfast, donned my cycling clothing and went to withdraw the Cannondale from the garage.
When I got there though I felt a certain guilt that I’m not using the Spesh as often as I should, so I decided to take that one instead. As it happens, at that point I’d actually done less miles this year on the Cannondale than the Spesh. I’ve just checked the stats. But I took the Spesh anyway.
The plan was to head out East toward Grimstone, a sort of variation on the old Belvoir Castle / Melton route, but not as far. I hoped to do about 45. I intended to use the new variation of the route that bypasses Rempstone and Wymeswold to the south. And that’s what I did.
This new variation is much more enjoyable and interesting. I’ve done the old Rempstone – Wymeswold version many times heading over to Lincolnshire, or to Melton but I don’t see myself using it again. I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet though and I took a wrong turn just after Stanford. I was pretty sure I was on the wrong road about half a mile later, and shortly afterwards found myself about to enter Loughborough, which confirmed it. Still – no matter, after I’d backtracked to the correct route I’d only added 1.5 flat miles. Passed a hospitable-looking pub at Burton on the Wolds and decided I’d have lunch there on the way back. A few miles later at the intersection of Six Hills Lane and Paddy’s Lane, having done about 24 miles, I turned back.
Ordered a San Miguel and a sandwich with chips at the pub, after fastening the bike to a railing with my high-tech reinforced plastic tie pseudo-lock. Quite impressed with the food there, I’ll definitely do this one again.
Really enjoyed that one, the lunch interval made it feel like a proper run out.
Annoyingly my Garmin watch saved the track and reset a few minutes after I pressed “pause” at the pub, to stop it recording my clogging around between the bar and the table outside. I suppose it must have a timeout. Consequently it synced the ride to Garmin Connect, and thereby to Strava, as two tracks. I deleted them from Strava, concatenated them and reposted the track as a single ride.
https://www.strava.com/activities/2587645868
Looking forward to doing that again one weekend soon. Will hope to go a little further next time. My knees are complaining slightly now but they didn’t give me any trouble during the ride; I did take it very easy though.
I wrapped up a bit too warm unfortunately. If I’d taken my lightweight backpack I could have stowed away the top layer, but I didn’t. Still – rather too warm than too cold. We’ll all be getting cold fingers and toes again in a few weeks.
47.04 miles, 2258 this year. Per-bike distances for 2019 so far are:
