On checking the bike over before my ride I noticed a nasty gash in the back tyre on the Merdia so I opted for an early change of the front and rear tyres to the Schwalbe Blizzard's I have bought for JOGLE.
I eventualy got out on the road at 9am, and the weather forecast was spot on! Overcast WSW wind and a real threat of rain!
The ride from home through Bradford-on-Avon, Norton St Philip and Charlton was reasonably dry! And quite nice as it was the reverse of the cycle home from Wells a couple of weeks ago. Interestingly the hill down to Hungerford Castle seamed a lot steeper than the ride up it!
As I got to Shepton Mallet the first drops of rain started to fall :-( This was going to be a damp day....
The hill down through Pilton was fantastic :-)
The Glastonbury Tor was very obscured by cloud and misty rain:-(
I appeared to be making very good time, which was surprising due to the constant head wind! And I made it to Bridgewater at about 12:30, unfortunately Bridgewater is designed as a stationary town as there are Traffic lights evey 2 feet! I had descided I would stop for lunch when I was out of Bridgewater and on the A39 proper (Just in case wifey caugt up with me - She was driving and left home at about 12:30)
Even though I had been munching JaffaCakes every 10 miles I was ravenous and dissolved the two Ham Sandwiched in minutes :-)
After Bridgewater the weather cheered up a lot and I started to dry out! I also caught my first sights of the Bristol Channel:-)
I did however appear to be constantly cycling up hill! But things were moving along incredibly well:-)
Minehead came and went and I was on my way to Porlock and the famous Porlock Hill - I did the 88 Miles to the base of Porlock hill in 6 hours! And things were looking good!
Now in hind site I should have taken the toll road it is a much longer hill but not as steep!
There are a number of things I have now realised about very steep hills!
1) They are very steep!
2)You need to have VERY low gears to get up them!
3)You need to have VERY sticky tyres to get up them!
4)Cars struggling to get up them are not inclined to be tolerant of bicycles strugging to get up them!
5)Cars can blow their engines going up them! Then you get a face full of oil smoke!
6)Specific to Porlock Hill - It is almost impssible to cycle over a cattle grid going up a steep hill.
7)After 88 miles of cycling into a wind attempting to cycle up a 1:4 hill is not a very good idea!
I managed to make it up the hill to the first major gradient and right hand corner! My right hand knee started hurting every time I put load on it! I opted for the safer walking up the first short bit of 25% :-(
I got back on the bike as the road turned the second 25% hill, and was going quite well until a little Fiat thing rattled by vomiting its oil out of the exhaust as it went, I then stopped and choked a bit!.
I managed to cycle up the rest of the hill, getting off just one more time to walk over a cattle grid, that was in a 1:6 ish part of the hill.
Unfortunatley this is when wifey caught up with me and she was then under the impression that I walked all the way up the hill :-(
So I can do 1:6 hills relatively easily, 1:5 hills I can work my way up, 1:4 hills stop me dead!
Wifey stopped in a layby further up the road and tooks some photies of me cycling.
Unfortunately from this point onwards every time I put to much load on my right leg my knee twinged! (Interesting not from the outer ligament where it normally aches but from the inside)
It did of course give me lots of excuses for stopping and taking photies of things :-)
Porlock Hill does go on for ever! The climb is over 1370 feet...
Once I got to the top I thought that it would be plain sailing to the camp site (I only had 12 miles left to go - How difficult can that be???)
Well ......
Wifey descided that she would route me down single track lanes.
The perspective doesn't show it well but there were 2 or more 25% down hills, and a similar number of 25% up hills! With muddy farm tracks and fords to cross.
At least one track had signs saying not suitable for motorised vehicles!
I eventualy arrived at the camp site 7 hours 48 minutes after setting of from home! It took me 6 hours to do 88 miles and 1 hour 48 minutes to do 14 miles!
It was fun :-)
I will definately be doing it again, but the next time I will NOT go up Porlock Hill but take the longer but not quite as steep toll road.
My vertical limit is most definately 1:5!!!! Unless I get some much lower gears on the bike and even then I will need stickier tyres!
The cycle computer had today's ride as 102.29 miles in 7 hours 23 minutes with an average speed of 13.8 mph
The RunGPS plot of today's ride can be found here...
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