I’m up in my home town of Hartlepool for a few days. Nothing to do with the upcoming Westminster by-election; so far the only useful work I’ve done for the party here is taking my mum’s postal vote to the post box.
A beautiful sunny afternoon and I thought a run along the coast was in order after work. I removed my bike from the garage here yesterday and inspected it – it’s picked up a little bit of surface rust on the shiny bits of the caliper brakes, and the stem bolts. I’ll replace the stem bolts probably and perhaps I’ll scrub up the brakes with a fine wire brush. I sprayed out the chain and the gears with GT-85 today, and relubed it. I also gave it a good clean with some heavy duty surface wipes – it was filthy! I had no idea standing in a garage did that to bikes, mine doesn’t seem to.
I gave the bar tape a good clean but within a couple of miles, as you can see in the pics, it was disgusting again. I’d made the mistake of leaving the bike gloves in my mum’s garage with it, and I suppose they must have absorbed a load of muck as well. Oh well.
At least it was running very nicely, when I climbed aboard after work and set off in the direction of Seaton Carew. I rode along the coast then inland a bit to Seal Sands, then hung a left toward Teesmouth. Very nice out there though the industrial landscape looks stark in the bright sunlight. But the headland across the bay looked beautiful, lit up by the sun.
Due to the aforementioned impending by-election, the 5 Live Drive programme to which I was listening was being broadcast largely from Hartlepool. They even brought Wayne Sleep on to reminisce about his childhood here; at one point he was actually getting quite emotional about it. And if I’d been listening in NW Leics as usual I’d no doubt have been feeling a bit homesick for my home town, so it was nice to be rolling through it on the way back in the spring sunshine.
https://www.strava.com/activities/5173559415
20.63 miles, 300 this month.