I am forever cycling around in circles. And with the weather worsening, presumably they will be ever decreasing circles.
So it came as a nice change when the opportunity to do something different arose this weekend. Hubby and I had a weekend away planned – delayed anniversary celebration – at a restaurant with rooms called Little Barwick House, in Barwick, which is the other side of Yeovil. After a quick peek with google maps, I realised that that’s not actually all that far from here. Rather than spend two hours in the gym waiting for youngest to finish bouncing, I decided I would cycle to our destination.
I spent ages on Bike Route Toaster sorting my route out. There are more direct routes, but I wanted to stick to the quieter back roads so as to enjoy my ride more. I printed out my route, the cue sheet, and the directions from the hotel. BRT had it down as around 3 1/2 hours riding which, for 36 odd miles, seemed a bit much but I went with it and left at 11:00am with 2:30pm as my goal arrival time.
The first hour or so was pretty standard stuff – basically heading fairly straight south for High Ham Hill. It’s still a very long hill! Having done it a couple of weeks ago it did hold less fear for me than before tho’. It’s just a shame there was no nice friendly feed stop at the top this time around!
From there it was a nice long down into Langport before turning left and into unknown territory, which is where it started to get more fun. Even in the light drizzle, it was definitely more interesting than the familiar. It felt a bit like being on holiday, and quite L2P – cycling through unknown but pretty villages and towns. Muchelney Abbey was as pretty as ever, Kingsbury Episcopi, Coat, Ash, Martock and Montacute were all lovely with their yellow stone buildings and olde worlde charm.
The roads were pretty quiet, which presumably explains why there is no need for road signs.. I did get lost a couple of times, which is why I ended up in Ash. A nice fellow cyclist helped me out in Martock as well, when the direction to Montacute was none too obvious. Still, no serious diversions taken, and I knew roughly where I was, so there was no panicking going on and I muddled my way back to join up with where I was meant to be.
The country charm wore off a bit on the main relief road around Yeovil but by that time I knew I was nearly there. After an unexpected up hill slog, it was basically all down hill to the little village of Barwick.
Cycling time: 2:39:33
Distance: 40.6 miles
Avs: 15.2 mph
ODO: 2226 miles
The weather was pretty windy and not all that warm. One reason why an mp3 is handy is that it blocks out the wind noise so you notice it less. It wasn’t a constant wind either, so was more annoying for the occasions where it caught me through a gap in the hedge and I’d suddenly find myself a foot further to left than I’d mean to be! As I’ve already mentioned, there was some drizzle for a while in the middle there too, which was less than attractive but luckily it cleared up after a while.
I’ve tweaked my route to show the accidental detour I took – and apparently I did 1350ft of climbing. Not a lot I guess but enough for me. I still can’t figure out why it’s supposed to take 3 1/2 hours + though – as you can see, it took me nowhere near that!
I enjoyed my little adventure a lot – and felt very proud of myself for some reason 🙂