Group Riding

I am sure you are aware that the government is considering what to do next about the current lockdown, and there may be some announcement next Sunday. However, there is no guarantee that there will be any early change which affects our riding.

The committee is considering what our next steps will be, following government advice and CUK guidelines.

In the meantime the rules are quite clear. No group rides, even informally organised, even with social distancing. Only solo riding allowed. Anything other than solo riding will not be covered by CUK insurance.

I can understand many members are keen to get out on club rides as soon as possible, but please contain your enthusiasm for a while longer. All members will appreciate how difficult this period has been, but will thank everyone for their patience and for keeping others safe. Your wellbeing and the lives of others may depend on it.

~ Dave Vine

In Isolation - cycling reports!

A diary from Ray and Chris who are in isolation - but it hasn't stopped them!

We’ve just finished a 2+ mile walk in the garden on my 100m circuit. I packed up lunch before we left and we’ve just finished it.

As I know several distance points between here and Oaks Park cafe I kept telling Christine where we would be if we were walking over there. 

We are now sitting in the summer house/ gym wondering if we can manage the walk back.

We have Ifit on the treadmill so we did a 24 minute walk round the pyramids in Egypt Sunday. While Christine was doing her 24 mins I did 16 mins on the static bike.

We still like the garden walk , Christine did 33 laps yesterday.

My son in Edinburgh brought home his 2 day old baby Friday so we decided to walk round Edinburgh yesterday. I shared the walking so we each did 25 minutes and We also did 25 mins static bike. We were back home for lunch.

We both rode together today.

We went up to the Chalet in Tadworth 8.5 miles but it was closed.

So we rode back to my friend Steve’s house 6.5 miles.

We had lunch I had tomato soup with homemade croutons and Christine had a tuna sandwich.

We were just about to leave after lunch and noticed we both had flat tyres full of thorns.

We decided to leave our bikes in Steve’s garage and walk home 2.55 miles 41+ laps.

Then like all good stories end we sat down and had a nice cup of tea.

The weather was so good last Sunday we set off from the Grove and walked to Morden Hall cafe ,69 laps of my 100 m track non stop ( I have ridden it so often I was able to tell Christine where we were all the way there).

Luckily  I had parked the tandem behind the summerhouse for us to ride back on, we just wobbled up the garden to the garage.

What did you do in the Great Plague, Grandad?

Well, there was this.........

and my "Right said Fred" moment; honest, guv, I measured the gap on the top staircase carefully before I built the baseboard.  I ended up having to cut off two opposing corners.......

Still, the end result is up there now.  All I need is my grandchildren back.  The boy, Jasper will not be too bothered but the little girl Ava will adore it!

Stravavarius

Just six or seven weeks ago we were seeing our grandchildren frequently and I was regularly supping with my friends and going to church.  On the Saturday we went out on Helen’s splendid all day ride to Fulham Palace, an interlude from building ourselves up for Tim’s trip to Los Picos, which in turn would prepare us for our ride up Alpe d’Huez, after which we hoped the Dieppe Raid would be a doddle.  The next day I went with friends to Manchester's Curry Mile before mixing with 75,000 strangers to watch the Manchester Derby; I was worried that I had booked cycling holidays that meant I would miss two cup finals as my team unexpectedly took a turn for the better.  They played a game on the Thursday behind locked doors but that was in another country and besides .....

Now I am busier than any of our younger family can credit catching up with jobs put aside and life is a day to day business.  My hope is that the supermarket packer who deals with our delivery will one day learn the difference between eating and cooking apples; the daily news is unreal until the statistics involve someone you know, as they did last week, and then the proximity of mortality makes you realise it’s not all just a strange dream.  Cycling almost daily keeps me sane (ish) and fit.  Sometimes it feels like a chore when I start, especially if I leave Maggie behind at home, but it takes only ten minutes before all I hear is the hiss of the tyres on the road and today’s song in my head, setting a rhythm I can try to keep up.  This morning I climbed Pine Walk to Non Piu Andrai from the Marriage of Figaro.  I sailed down Holly Lane with the wind in my ever-lengthening hair and the magnificent opening of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in my head and the opening riff to Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water got me up Grove Lane.

If you ignore the tragedy, there is much to like.  So little traffic that after a quick check you can smoothly swerve away from pedestrians or potholes.  The weather has been kind and there is a new camaraderie amongst cyclists, who almost to a person return a brief nod or a hand signal, sometimes with enthusiasm; hang on, chaps, we are English!  Cycling solo means you can go at your own pace; I was never one for chatting on the road anyway.  But I did not realise how much I would miss lunch in the pub and cake in the cafe, and the chat that went with that.

The least known war memorial in London, on Verdun Avenue, was never busy in the old world

With little else to think of on the road, Strava has changed its role in my life.  Long ago, in March, I used it merely to record the distance I had covered but now I am in danger of enslavement.  Because it can provide a measure of my increasing fitness, it encourages me to ride the same routes.  It has got me setting a distance target for each month and I was so close to making April’s target that I very nearly went out a second time at ten minutes to midnight, just to ride around the block and cross the line.

I have failed to master it properly but it is my only companion when Maggie does not ride with me.  I measure my effort in distance but its graph shows hours spent in the saddle.  Thus April’s curve disappointingly showed me doing worse than in March even though I had ridden a greater mileage; this was because it took me five hours less to complete the greater distance.  Another conundrum; as I pedal down empty hills as fast as my nerve will allow, I improve my average speed.  Obviously, I have to climb an uphill to “earn” a downhill cruise, but is it faster for a cyclist, unlike a runner, to ride a hilly route rather than a flat one?  Unable to iron out the North Downs, I can make no true comparison, but I wonder, if solo riding continues (and it may well have to do for us over seventies) if I can “cheat” by planning routes which go up the dip slope and down the scarp.

Time to spray the chain and check the tyres, Banstead and Farthing Down and Caterham-on-the Hill await my daily visit.  I’ll pass Ray and Chris’ house and as always wave at them in their three month isolation as I go by.  I know by heart every worsening pothole, every little sharp incline, every closed public loo and every deserted coffee stop and pub.  Still, I may be lucky and pass another Sou’Wester; so far, Mark (twice, each time on a bike) and Steve (he was on foot).  Then there was the chap who waved so enthusiastically that he may well have been a Wayfarer.  Sorry, whoever you were, but I was being driven relentlessly up Farthing Down by Jimi Hendrix in pursuit of a better Strava time.

Riding in Richmond Park, when it's closed to cyclists!

Working for the NHS is finally paying off after 25 years!  The weather has been so so good a lot of us are able to take advantage of it!  I have been into Richmond Park twice using my ID.  They are allowing key workers in with ID and I also have a letter we were given to carry around with me.  It was so peaceful with only a handful of bikes, a few joggers and walkers.

I went through Kingston and not a soul in Kingston Market Place.  Along the River Thames- a few more people there so had to be more careful.  It was along there I saw Mike Barrett.  Past Ham House and into the park.  I was stopped twice for my ID, but I really don't have a problem with that.  It stops everyone else going in!

Take care everyone.  Happy Easter.  Stay safe and stay well.

~Sue Bellamy

Pembroke Lodge car park

Empty road

Relaxed deer

Pen Ponds

Kingston market on Saturday morning

Ham house

Sue's not "all-day ride" to Chiswick House

Today we should have been going to Chiswick House with Tony for an all day ride. Instead I went in there for my daily exercise, which was only a walk before everyone else decided to go on such a beautiful sunny day.

The playground was empty instead of child shouting and having fun. Squirrels running around the dead tree and spotted my 1st bluebells of the year.

Please stay well and safe everyone. Hope to see you all again soon.

~Sue Bellamy

Exercise in the time of plague

The human mind is a curious place.  Amid the rush and tumble of the everyday grind we might have thought as something approaching paradise a world in which we would have been free for an hour's traffic-free local cycling every day.  Now it is upon us there are days when it seems like a chore!  It's training for nothing in particular; Los Picos is off, Dieppe is extremely unlikely.  Worse, it's riding alone (or just the two of us).  I probably have a reputation for putting my head down as a non-conversationalist but we miss the company very much.  And oh, how important is coffee and cake to turn a day of exercise into a joyous outing!  As Joni Mitchell wrote, "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone". 

We tried cycling East through Croydon and were deeply uncomfortable about the lack of social distancing.  West towards Sutton might be not quite so bad but that is a path well cycled in normal times on our regular visits to Nonsuch Park.  North is the Wandle Trail and that would be unfair to those having a walk as their daily outing.  So South it is, and you can't go South without hills and you can't go too far while keeping within the Cycling UK guidelines of keeping self-sufficient against the prospect of mishap and not using public transport to get home.

Thus we take a daily trip up Farthing Down and then back up the equally inclined Grove Lane to Clock House, through the Woodcote Park Golf Club and through Woodcote Village Green where you can still buy fresh vegetables if you take out a small mortgage, and along Millionaire's Row (Woodcote Lane).

It varies, depending on whether I do a lap or more of Woodcote Green, but last time was 19.10Km with 237m climbing.  It takes a few minutes over the hour but adds up to 95Km a week (we only do five days).  We take energy bars and drinks, of course, and can stop in a deserted place to refuel briefly.

           No Parking by the roadside!  In fairness the sign is difficult to read as you drive past

Paul rides up the furrow we are wearing into the tarmac.

Farthing Down Car Park is never empty, even on rainy days in normal times.  Trouble is, they have also closed the loos.  It's alright for the boys up there, but less so for the girls.

Twice a week I am allowed out by myself so long as I talk to no-one and stop nowhere, and I can push the circuit out a bit without stretching the guidelines too far, because I could call on assistance from home and take the bike back in a car if I had an irreparable mechanical problem.  I can get to Farthing Down over Banstead (the Pine Walk climb) and Holly Lane.  I can return a similar return route using the Rectory Lane climb; this has the advantage over Clock House of avoiding the pedestrian rail bridge and the path near the golf course, on both of which we have had social distancing issues.  Also, instead of coming back down the Down, I can continue past Chaldon Church and up Doctor's Lane to Caterham on the Hill and then whiz down the descent to Coulsdon.  I can vary the route with any combination of these.  All three last week came to 40.8Km with 466m climbing.