British Summer Time

The clocks changed on Sunday.  So did the weather!  On the plus side it is light til about quarter to eight,.  On the minus side it has been a very windy week.

My big halogen lights and ten ton battery pack are stashed away for the occasional pub run.  The bike seems so much lighter.  It was been very windy though, gale force at times.  The fixie wasn't always the wisest choice for commuting, but I stuck it out.

We put the KHS tandem up on eBay last week.  Sold it to a bloke who wanted to ride with his daughter.  Hope they enjoy it.  Makes a big difference to the cluttered state of the garage.

Saturday morning I’d planned to meet Simon and Catherine and their friends Sally and Annie up at Grizedale.  It was absolutely tipping down while I was getting the bike ready and the car loaded.  It was looking to be a grim day.  As I drove north, the weather improved slightly, but my mood didn’t as I forgot to pull off at the south Lakes turn and had to go on to the next exit and double back.  I was now running late and running short of fuel.  I got a text from Simon saying they were running late too.  The garage at Newby Bridge didn’t have any diesel, hopefully getting some later that morning.  I thought I had enough to get up to Moor Top and back.  Grizedale was hosting an off road triathlon, canoe-mtb-trail run.  The visitors centre and surrounding area was chocker, the North Face trail off limits.  Fortunately Moor Top was too far away to act as an overflow car park.  The others eventually turned up and we set out down the familiar route to Greythwaite.  It seemed a lot more eroded and the tricky bit through the wall was only rideable if you hit the exact line (or were much better than any of us!).  The weather had improved considerable and we were soon down to shirt sleeves.  I had two stupid crashes, first one was just by riding into a tree stump, the second a slow speed front wheel washout.  All in all a great day out.  I managed to get diesel on the way back, but had to queue for 25 minutes at one of the two working pumps.

This morning was the Riby Triathlon.  I was scheduled to man the railway crossing.  There were three or four trains scheduled and I was to stop people trying to get through once the barrier was down and note down numbers so riders could be credited with the lost time.  In the end only two riders were stopped, but I did have to spend the morning in the showery rain.  It’s good to do though as volunteer marshals are what makes these events possible.

This afternoon we did a short trip out to Bond’s for a tea cake.

Miles for the week – 106.  Still running short of my required mileages.  Hopefully now the nights are lighter, we’ll get out some mid week evenings

Tim