Anyway, talking of MiniMe…  Yes we were.  Briefly.  Yesterday.  Weren’t you paying attention?  Well we were, and today he wanted to go for a ride.  I don’t know where he gets it from ;).  Winter has been a bit hard on him from a riding perspective – there’s not enough light after school, and the weekends are frequently busy and even when they’re not weather usually stops play.  Having gotten a decent ride in yesterday I didn’t really need to be getting my own miles in, so finally I got to say yes instead of no.

I was planning on doing an hour or so with him, and then making up for that with an hour at the gym.  However this would have made my life logistically more complicated, and resulted in two different sets of kit to be washed, which seemed a little extreme for a Sunday.  At some point a little lightbulb came on over my head, cartoon stylee, and I realised that the simplest thing to do was to loop with him, and then loop with me.  Good idea no?  Darn tootin’ it was! :).

To be fair, MiniMe got the better part of the deal.  We did the Nyland loop backwards, as he puts it, on fairly quiet roads, with plenty of sun, and managed to avoid the wind.  You can see for yourself how nice it was – and you can play compare and contrast while you’re at it.

MiniMe at Nyland

Me at Nyland

Having dropped him safely back within town lines, I did a U-turn and headed out to do my own Gorge-ous loop.  Yep, first time up the Gorge this year.  <insert your own joke here>.  There were quite a lot of cyclists coming down, as I plodded my way up, but no others going up.  Mind you, I imagine if there were any they would have been going faster than me, so I’d never have seen them anyway!  The Gorge is quite nice at this time of year.  It’s open enough again to have a bit of life about it at the bottom, but after the first couple of bends the car parks empty out, the grockles fade away, and it’s just you, the bike, the climb, the goats, and the scenery.  Mildly Zen.  Oh, and some people obsessed with climbing up things.  Each to their own.  There’s also the inevitable stream of slightly flasher than usual cars trying to prove that they can drive round corners too fast, presumably right up until the point they prove they can’t.  TVR, followed by Porsche, followed by a BMW with that little badge that proves it’s not just a BMW, it’s an M&S BMW…

Up on the top I found the wind – deep joy – which I then turned straight into, as you do.  Well, that was the way home was, and that was where I was going!  The weather got greyer, and colder, and darker, and just generally less pleasant.  I did contemplate extending my route by going down Burrington and up Rowberrow, but I decided against it and stuck to the original plan – over to Charterhouse, and down Shipham Hill which was, unsurprisingly, the highlight of my ride.  Especially as unlike yesterday, and with the exception of the truly nasty back road from Draycott to Cheddar, the roads were dry.  That’s a road I shall be avoiding for a while and I suggest you do too!

Cycling time: 1:47:44 hrs
Distance: 25.87 miles.
AVS: 14.3 mph.
ODO: 11653 miles

It was a slow ride as MiniMe doesn’t do fast – yet! – and then I did uphill, but hey, it’s not a race, right? ;).  The bike hasn’t felt quite the same since yesterday when it hit the same pothole that probably caused MD’s puncture.  It was hidden in a puddle, and was unavoidable because of the 4*4 going the other way… I think it’s time to go see Andrew again.  I need to get my front winter wheel going around again, get the back brake taken apart, serviced and put back together, and now I think I just need him to check the whole bike over and check I didn’t do some damage I haven’t found yet.  Better safe than sorry right? 🙂