I left work early, harbouring thoughts of doing 30 or 40. No rain for a couple of days now but the roads are still fairly wet – possibly from thawed frost? I took the Boardman.
I set off at about 3:15, thinking of doing a Twycross. But I changed my mind after the first few yards, and decided to head south instead. Had to go through Hugglescote rather than Donny Le Heath to avoid a closed road, which meant an annoying wait at traffic lights. Down through Ellistown, Bagworth, Newbold Verdon as usual. As I neared Newbold I realised I hadn’t brought a phone with me, which meant I’d be somewhat stuffed in the event of a mechanical failure. It was also getting a bit cold. So I decided I’d keep it down to 20 miles or so.
Rather than taking the right along Kirkby Lane I continued on to Desford, and turned back from there.
Quite a beautiful sunset. The only bummer apart from starting to feel a bit icy was the rush hour traffic at Ibstock on the way back. Overall quite a pleasant run out.
Was surprised to see some frost on the pavements at Ibstock; didn’t think it was quite that cold.
While half-heartedly clearing up in the garage at the weekend I came across the old Cateye Velo 5 bike computer that I’d removed from the Boardman, because it had developed an occasional habit of cutting out for the odd couple of miles. I decided to give it another chance and put it back on, after cleaning the contacts. And it did behave itself on this ride. Very accurate too; agreed with the GPS to within 0.01 miles over 21.71.
I put some titanium stem bolts on too; the steel ones I’d put on there only a few months ago had already started to develop a bit of surface rust. Annoyingly, one of the six bolts in the set I bought had been machined differently somehow, with a small round hole instead of a hex-shaped socket for an Allen key! I was only going to use four of them, but I’ve contacted the supplier anyway.
https://www.strava.com/activities/3028412891
253 done this year, well ahead of this time last year (178).