Best Week for a While

I forgot to mention 20 odd miles out to Great Ecc last week,  Cold but sunny and a nice stop at the Courtyard Cafe.

The start of this week was the usual trips to work.  I rode the Pompino for a couple of days, but the lower bar position and lack of gears set my ribs hurting.  Plus I was feeling the effects on the Saturday MTB ride, which was much harder in retrospect than I’d appreciated.  Wednesday I used the Hewitt, much easier.

I’ve been off work since then, as Jayne has half term break.  Thursday we went up to the Lakes with no 2 son to get him a tent for his 18th birthday.  We settled on a MacPac Minaret after getting some very good service and advice from The Epicentre in Ambleside.

I thought I would be on my own for Thirsty Thursday, but Karl called at the last minute and we had our first proper night ride there and back.  The lanes that are so familiar in daylight are suddenly strange and unpredictable.  We came close to overshooting several corners.

Friday was set to be rainy, so it was ‘plumbing day’.  I had several jobs to do, fix a leaky shower, fit an outside tap and replace a washer in the bath to see if that fixed the poor water flow.  First problem – didn’t have a spanner big enough to get the shower valve cover off.  Off to B&Q for a big pipe wrench.  After a bit of swearing and a lot of oomph, the shower was back working.  I thought I’d tackle the ‘easy’ job of the bath washer next.  Second problem – the screw holding the tap top on was stuck fast and I rounded out the head.  I had to drill it out, which took ages.  Once out, the tap gubbins came off easily and I swapped the washer and got it back on quite quickly. Third problem – no water would come out!  After taking it off again, I realised that the mechanism was knackered and would not wind back properly.  So I went back into town to get a new mechanism.  Apparently you can’t buy just the gubbins, you have to get a new pair of tap tops.  Once home, the tap went on easily and water flowed.  Success!  Fourth problem – when I went to turn the hot water supply back on I noticed that the bottom of the airing cupboard was soaking.  The valve to the water heater was leaking and had probably been doing so for a while.  We shut of the heating and water again and called the emergency plumber.  He eventually came and temporarily fixed the problem, but as it was heating, not plumbing could not do a proper job.  It seemed OK, but we left the tray under the valve just in case.  By this time I was fed up of plumbing.

Saturday morning and the tray had water in it, plus there was water dripping from another valve.  We put a call in to the heating engineer, who could come between 12 and 6.  So we went out for a quick 20 miler in the nice sunny weather.  While we were waiting for the heating guy, I fitted the outside tap, not without a little swearing and scuffed knuckles.  The guy eventually came at 4 ish.  Turns out he is the organizer of the local BMX club and a bike fan.  Once he’d replaced four valves and we were waiting for the heating system to refill, I took him to the garage and showed off my bikes.

This morning, Alison, Joe and I headed off to Chipping.  Karl caught up with us at Inglewhite and we got to the Cobbled Corner Cafe quite early, despite the headwind.  The Cafe was in chaos, they’d just had a coachload of walkers leave and a bike club run arrive.  We just ordered coffee and cake otherwise, according to Alison, we would be waiting at least an hour for any hot food.  The wisdom of this advice was soon bourn out by the service to other diners. The ride back was with the wind and much easier.

All in all a pretty good week.

Miles for the week – 119 miles

Mile for the year – 4623 miles

Cheers

Tim