Invitation to enter the 2024 Photo Competition

Attendance for all groups was high in 2024 and many have been off on other adventures too. So we hope that you have been busy with your cameras and phones and are keen to review your photos and send the best ones in for the competition.

Please submit your photos before the end of January using this method:

Visit this website: '2024 Competition Dropbox' and follow instructions to select and deliver your photos. This is what you should see:

N.B. When using this website to post photos to the Dropbox it is not necessary to sign up to, or log into Dropbox even if you are invited to do so.

Click on 'Add files' to select the source of your photos then select your photos (or folders), or if you already have your file list open just drag and drop photos from the list into the white box.
 
Once you have selected one or several photos fill in your name and email address then click 'Upload'.

Send an email to me, Tim, to provide this important information about each photo:

•           the photo filename (e.g. P1040276.jpg)
•           a caption which we will inscribe on your photo
•           the competition category (see below)

The rules and categories are simple. The full 'Competition Rules' document is available under the 'Information Hub' heading on our website.

Competition Period: Photos taken during the 2024 calendar year.

Your photos must all illustrate a connection to cycling by depicting a bicycle or cyclist for example, or some obvious cycling association.

You may submit two photos in each category:

  6.1. Male      one or more male cyclists
  6.2. Female    one or more female cyclists
  6.3. Action    cyclist(s) in action
  6.4. Scenery   scenery or landscape
  6.5. Building  buildings, architecture
  6.6. Humorous  funny or amusing
  6.7. Group     any mix of male and female cyclists

Note that the award for a winning photograph in each category will be given to the photographer who took the picture, not to the model(s).

This method for submitting photos should work with any device (PC, Apple, iPad, iPhone, Tablet or Android phone) but if it doesn't work for you, please let me know so that we can address the problem. It does depend on you being able to locate the folder in your phone, tablet or PC where you store your photos. It does not require you to install the DropBox software.

This is the best way of sending photos. Please note that some methods of transmitting photos, such as WhatsApp, shrink the photo before sending, diminishing the quality of the original photo as it is in your camera or phone.

We're looking forward to seeing your photos. Note that this year Andy and I will be collaborating to organise the competition.

~ Tim and Andy

January, 2025

Wheezing and Whizzing and close encounters of the absurd kind. Nonsuch two-o-clockers 4 January

Today was my turn to lead the two-o-clockers on the short ride and Maggie and I rolled up on a cold, grey day to find the ever present Colin, and Ken, at the Mansion, along with a very welcome infrequent visitor, Colin 2.  The one-o-clockers had long gone on their superior adventure but there was no wind to speak of, and no rain, so for January it was as good weather as we're going to get for an hour or two out on the bike and it was pleasing that a few more turned up; Jackie, followed by Anna and Roger.

Anna had acquired a new cold but I expect she was there to keep her eye on Roger, who has acquired a new pacemaker and on Monday, at last, was given the all clear to join us on a bike instead of on foot, as he has been doing.  I was not sure whether they had fully taken on board that we were going up to Banstead; sometimes I suspect that their memories choose to forget that this run, though short, is a gentle but persistent climb from the start until the tea stop.

Out of the park, under the railway bridge at Cheam station and then up Sandy Lane to turn along Cuddington Way, an undulating, privately unmaintained road of particularly portly sleeping policemen separated by cracks and potholes between concrete blocks.  It was at that point that Anna and Roger decided that the pacemaker had done insufficient training, and they sensibly turned for home before the climb up to Banstead station.  What with the incoming weather front it was not a great day for asthmatics and there was a point when we had not only six riders but what sounded like a further couple of ghostly wheezers.

Still, the survivors got to the Cafe in the Park (fka Pistaccio's) in good spirits and probably stayed a few minutes too long in the warm, considering the onset of dusk.  When we braved the cold, Colin nearly met an unhappy fate in collision with a jaywalker, who waited until the last second to spring out at him from between parked cars.  The cold bit was zinging down the hill past the prisons but they have fixed the drain half way down so you no longer have to take an anxious look in the mirror before edging out in front of recklessly driven Twitmobiles.

We split at Downs Road, as usual, the two Cheamer Colins aiming for Belmont Station and the rest of us, Wallingtonians and Carshaltoners, making our way east.

25 km door to door, enough to get fresh air into the lungs.  Thanks to everyone for your company.

 

Richmond Park Cyclists

For anyone who wants to keep abreast of this marvellous organisation's activities on behalf of all cyclists they have a free monthly bulletin, delivered by email. Visit this link to sign up:

https://www.richmondparkcyclists.org/get-involved/

On the website there is a link to back issues of the bulletin. 

Regarding social media they have a presence on Facebook and also post to Bluesky (@richmondpkcyclists.bsky.social.) as well as X (aka Twitter). 

~ Tim 

How far did you ride in 2024?

Your 2024 mileage totals please

Please forgive the cutting and pasting from last last year's request 😕:

This is a request to submit your mileage totals for the last twelve months (1st Jan. 2024 to 31st Dec. 2024) for consideration towards the annual awards for the greatest distances cycled. Your scores will be entered into the Big Spreadsheet where, since the dawn of the 21st century, the precious records of your accomplishments in the club have been maturing.

There are two shiny trophies, one for the woman who has cycled more miles than any other woman and one for the man with the highest mileage amongst the men. Having two separate prizes for persons of each gender might sound a little quaint. But that is our tradition and while the prize money attached to these two awards remains identical for both winners nothing is likely to change.

And we have a special award, the Mark Roy Trophy, for the person recording the largest increase in mileage over the previous year. So anyone who has posted their mileage for both 2024 and 2023 is eligible. 

To summarise the rules, your miles must have been clocked up whilst riding your bicycle, tricycle, tandem or eBike on or off road. Mileages achieved on turbo trainers, Watt bikes or any other static contraption don't count. We know that this is something of a blow to members who have been riding through virtual alpine landscapes with Zwift or Rouvy but we are only considering miles actually, rather than virtually, travelled.

For the competition, contenders for the prizes must be regular riders in the club though we are happy to collect mileage data for everyone who is a paid up member of CTC South West London. And we wish to continue recording mileages for our several members who ride eBikes.

If you are curious at all about how many miles you ride in the course of a year please start recording your distances for 2025 in a diary or spreadsheet.

Just one word of warning; several riders who use a GPS enabled device such as a Garmin, or smartphones running apps like Strava or RideWithGPS have experienced rides when their devices stop communicating with the satellites, sometimes for quite a while, and this can lead to totally unreliable data. So please verify the accuracy of your data. The evidence of this known problem is a long straight bee-line between two points on your ride where you know the road really had many twists and turns.

Fixie Dave's Garmin nodded off for a while with this result!

In my opinion this is not a problem which is specific to Strava or other phone app but is to do with the phone and its own software, memory resources perhaps. This erroneous data can also accumulate if you have hopped on a train with your bike but forgotten to stop recording 😏. Fancy doing that!

Please write to me with your total mileage:

Tim Court (Associate Bean Counter*)

We hope to be able to present the prizes in our traditional awards ceremony at the Annual Lunch, this year on Wednesday 5th March.

A very Happy New Year to you all and if you haven't been collecting your mileage scores please start now, from January 1st 2025.

The Bean Counters need your numbers!

~ Tim C

*Nota Bene: The Bean Counting team has now now doubled its number of staff and we are pleased to advise you that Mick Arber of B Group has flown through his apprenticeship and is now embarking on his new career in our Bean Counting Department. 

28th December - Short Ride to Malden Church

It was another cold day, but thankfully no wind (although Karen was convinced otherwise) or rain. I had already seen various members of the Saturday Gang turning up for the long ride (or not) so I was uncertain how many would still be available for the short ride. In the end we were six, Sabina and Bernard keeping me company along with Karen and Colin and joined by Wednesday rider Patrick on his first Saturday ride. 

I was once again charged with taking everyone on the Malden Church route, with tea in Costa at World of Golf which was so busy that we had to squeeze around a table intended for fewer folk. Heading back we avoided the muddy stretch by The Hogsmill and came through the alleyway instead to the St John's the Baptist Church, where we briefly stopped for a look at the old and new façade and a photo op by the house next door. 

Note to self - not all bridge photos will be pretty

Doesn't my bike look great?

As it was turning to dusk, the route back through Old Malden, Cuddington and Stoneleigh was much improved by the Christmas lights. 12.5 miles approx. and back in the Park before 5pm.    

Four weddings and a fun ride; Beddington 1-o-clockers 21 December

It wasn't that my alarm didn't go off, but my step-measuring pulse-measuring electronic wristwatch is stuck on British Summertime because I can only change the time via the app on my mobile phone and my new phone does not recognise my old watch and the two of them are still sending Bluetooth messages to each other without success like a disputative couple trying to find each other in a busy supermarket.

In sixty nine million years time on a small blue planet orbiting an insignificant star in the NGC 1300 Galaxy my watch's bluetooth signal will be detected by green-headed aliens with pointy ears and they will recognise that there is, after all, a civilisation somewhere out there, recognise my plight and respond with a helpful solution.  But their response will take another sixty nine million years to get back to me and by then I will probably have another new phone......

NGC 1300.  My bluetooth signal is the little white dot left of centre.

Anyway, it is confusing having a watch that is permanently an hour out, and it led to me thinking that I had an hour to spare.  So at twenty to one Maggie gets home from a hospital visit expecting to find me loading the drinks bottle and fixing the lights and instead I am sitting at the breakfast room table having a leisurely light lunch and marvelling at how much I have got done on a cycling Saturday.

I am supposed to be leading the one-o-clock Beddington Park ride.  Cue chaos, just like the beginning of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.  Lots of rushing about and expletives and pulling on cycling togs and forgetting helmets and Maggie never did get to eat all of her lunch and I never got a cup of tea and she was ahead of me but I think I got to Beddington Park within the traditionally accepted ten minute leeway.  Certainly I got there to a group of grinning faces, to whose owners Maggie had related my incompetence.

And a good job we got there too, because Colin was not there, and Sharon was in in acute need of being cheered up, and Anna had come on her own because Roger is still not fit to cycle and Ken was there, and they were all hoping to be led somewhere.

The shortest day of the year is a perpetual disappointment because, ignoring the astronomical leap-second  it is just as long as any other day, it just has the fewest daylight hours.  Thus on a fine, chilly, blustery but beautiful winter's afternoon a short ride was called for.  I decided to aim for MED at Merton Abbey Mills, because the journey back delivers Ken to his home well before dusk and the cakes, though not cheap, are absolutely delicious.

Today (because of lack of lunch) Maggie and I were allowed a whole cake each.  Orange polenta and Ginger with pumpkin, both shared.  Yum yum yum.

The cycle ride.  Phipps Bridge beside the folly, taken by a press ganged passer-by in case you wondered. 

Oh, yes, we had a cycle ride too, and everybody got home before dark and I delivered Ray's Christmas card (therein another shaggy dog story, to be told another time) and Sharon had a nice afternoon, which was important.  

Short Report for Short Ride - Leading Leaders 14th December

   

From Karen

Short Report for Short Ride - Leading Leaders

For the short ride to Ashtead Common, Colin was fortunate to be led by not one, not two, not three, but four ride leaders: Colinq, Helen, Steve and myself. So not much chance, hopefully,  of losing Colin or losing our way!  We also enjoyed fairly light traffic and bright sunshine, a welcome break from the dank weather of late.

It was all going so well until we reached Ashtead high street and spied Handleys staff removing the outside tables. That's okay,  we weren't thinking of sitting outside anyway.   Alas, the café was in fact closing.  After some pondering,  the ever-resourceful Colinq was first to make a suggestion, so off we headed to The Woodman (or so I thought!).  Our initial coffee plans having been thwarted, my thoughts turned (obviously) to perhaps my first mulled wine of the festive season.  It was not to be ......Colinq sped ahead and turned in the opposite direction, heading towards a parade of shops. We stopped at the Ashtead Cafe which, contrary to its "greasy spoon" appearance, served quality hot drinks and cake.

                                                                   Coffee at last!

Darkness descended all too quickly as we headed back through Ashtead Common, all of us managing to avoid slipping on the occasional mounds of wet leaves. It was completely dark when we reached the Nonsuch path potholes.  My front light wasn't man enough but Colinq saved the day......