On Friday I thought it would be a good idea to do Chippenham to New Forest and Back but I realised it would be in excess of 140 mile round trip (Not somthing I fancied) So I thought what If I do Chippenham to Lymington, then do a lap of the Isle of Wight :-)
The cycle to Devizes was normal..... Once out of Devizes I headed out towards Amesbury along fantastic roads I used to commute along for over a year.
I was then onto Salisbury Plain proper, with tank crossings and everything!
(In over a year of commuting I only saw tanks twice and neither time were they crossing :-)
After Salisbury I headed out onto country roads.
Along the way I had a bit of chain suck and the front derailleur bent again :-( I stopped and bent it back into shape with a handy piece of wood lying on the side of the road.
Eventually I popped out and ended up in Hampshire and the New Forest :-)
I was initially taken back by how liitle forest there was in the forest!
But then there was trees, and everything was ok :-) Besides the horses made up for it anyway!
Eventually I ended up at Lymington arriving at about 12:30 :-) I bought my foot passenger ticket (£11.90), and parked up and had my lunch whilst I waited for the ferry to arrive.
The cycle to Lymington from Chippenham was 66.88 miles and took approximately 4 hours 25 mins with an average speed of 15.13 mph
The RunGPS plot can be found here...
When the ferry arrived and after the passengers had alighted, the foot passengers were the first to board :-)
I was a bit uncertain about leaving the bike alone in the rack provided, but on consideration who the hell could steal it on board a boat!
At Yarmouth I decided to do a clockwise tour of the island :-)
Within minutes of setting of I came across wonderfull blue seas and lovely shoreline.
Unfortunately it would be another 30 miles before I would sea anything as stunning :-(
I have never come across so many traffic lights as on the Isle of Wight, and they are nearly all at the bottom of hills!
I was naively hoping that there would be less cars on the island and that I would have an almost constant sea view, on both counts I was mistaken :-(
There was also a rumour that the Isle of White is flat, this I can confirm is also a lie. It has rolling hills and one or two of them are quite high!
It was whilst climbing one of these hills that I experienced the second chain suck of the day and this one appears to be terminal for the front derailleur (Notice the crack in the picture)
Plan is to take the bike in for a service next week, I will get them to replace the front derailleur at the same time.
The tour of the island was approxiamately 50 miles and took approxiamtely 3 hours 40 minutes.
The GPS and phone had a hissy fit about 5 miles from Yarmouth and I lost the will to fix it on the side of the road!
I managed to get back to Yarmouth at 5:30 and caught the ferry arriving back at Lymington at about 6:15 where wifey was waiting in the car to take me home :-)
The RunGPS plot of the world tour of IOW can be found here...
The cycle computer had todays ride as 117.30 miles in 7 hours 56 minutes with an average speed of 14.7 mph
And I enjoyed it!
1 comment:
Well done, I saw where you were on Run GPS yesterday! Good ride, chappeau again! You need to sort that front mech and chain issues, most of us real riders just stop turning the pedals and back pedal to sort this issue out ... it seems that the usual Berry brute force and ignorance cannot be terminated in time to avoid a catastrophe! ;-) If this is occurring when you are free wheeling rather than when dropping the chain of the chainring imvho I suggest that you're suffering a sticky freewheel. Run lots of oil through it!
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