A thoroughly decent day with double digits temperatures forecast for the afternoon. Only intermittently sunny, but bright. A stiff wind from the south. So I did the southbound route. Pretty much the same as Saturday, except that I went a little bit further toward Sibbertoft after crossing the border into Northamptonshire. But not much. I didn’t take the Wood Road diversion on the way back up. But I did come the short way over the last few km, now that Standard Hill has a tolerable surface. After doing the longer way through Ibstock so many times it feels a bit like coming through a wormhole.
I stopped for refreshments at the village shop at Gilmorton. To my disappointment the single table outside was already occupied by a small group of cyclists, but fortunately they were about to leave. One of them had a limited edition Boardman with carbon forks like mine. I could see it had had some use – the yellow bar tape and yellow-sided tyres had been swapped out, also like mine. I didn’t engage them in fraternal cycling chat.
Listened to another couple of hours of the Reacher novel. Nearly half way through and he hasn’t hurt anyone yet, which is unusual. I also listened to 5 Live for a while – Jay Foreman from the excellent YouTube channel Map Men was on talking about English counties; in particular the confusing differences between historic, administrative and postal definitions. One of my favourite niche nerd topics, even more so since discovering that I live in an exclave of historic Derbyshire surrounded by historic Leicestershire.
Sorry to say that the new saddle did feel a bit uncomfortable after 40km or so. But tolerable. I probably wouldn’t do much more than a fondo on that bike anyway so it’s destined to stay on there, I think.
Very enjoyable one, 104.47km. Hopefully more on Sunday to make the most of the weather before the rain and single digit temperatures return.