I am SO bored of fog.  Bring me sunshine, please?  It’s bad enough when you wake up to fog and it burns off just as you get in from a ride, as usually happens, but at the moment it just never seems to go away :(.

Since I have the Lionheart on Sunday, and a fairly long ride planned on Thursday with George, today I was planning on just doing the usual kind of loop.  You know, taking it easy, enjoying the ride, and coming home.  But the fog makes everything boring.  It is uninspiring.  Featureless, monotonous and drab.  Chilly and damp too.  Not the best for doing a not challenging, not exciting, very predictable, route.  So I decided to do something different.  Sadly I will also have to admit to being minorly motivated by Strava, and hill climbs, and to my competitive side peeping through just a little too…

So I decided to do one of my seaside loops, but one of the ones that includes hills, to spice things up a little.  Starting with my bete noire, which did not go particularly well.  I guess I didn’t push as hard as I could have done, and I definitely slackened off at the top when it became clear that today was not a record breaking day.  Maybe it’s hard to aim for a goal that you can’t see?  Maybe last night’s red wine wasn’t the best form of carb loading?  But 15:12 to the top is not the end of the world, it’s still towards the top of my table, and now it’s on Strava I can compete with me and everyone else, knowing that there’s room for improvement, right? 😉

My fog covered sunglasses went into the back pocket, and it was down t’other side to Churchill and round the back roads to Sandford, where I discovered that the road to Puxton was closed.  I was in the process of figuring out what to do about this when the nice (probably very bored at having to sit there all day and manage traffic) man got out of his van, moved the barrier, and gestured me through.  Apparently the way was passable for those on two wheels, as is often the case, if I wanted to use it.  Which clearly I did.  They’re re-laying patches of the road surface so there were a couple of bits where I had to walk and carry the bike, but other than that it was indeed rideable.  And blissful since you know there’s no traffic around to trouble you.  Gotta love closed road events ;).

On to what I was fully expecting to be my next cyclo-cross section – getting up and over the scaffolding bridge at Wick.  But no.  It was not to be!  The temporary bridge had completely gone, and once again I was ushered through.  I was allowed to cycle over the shiny new bridge, which is now open to pedestrians and cyclists if not yet to traffic.  How exciting is that?  Trailblazing!  Well I thought it was exciting.  There’s a lot to be said for novelty value, and precious little of it to be had when you’ve been cycling around here for a few years *grin*.

I nipped down and took a photo of it afterwards just for you, which was good of me no?  It’s a pretty substantial bit of kit, so I’m thinking that the “Weak Bridge” signs at either end of the road may now well be superfluous…

The fog continued unabated, along with the associated lack of wind, which did at least help with the flying along feeling.  Or more to the point not hinder it.  Me and my happy legs flew all the way around the wiggly bits, along the straight at Sand Bay, and up the beautifully re-surfaced hill from the Commodore Hotel.  A decent road surface does make it easier, if not easy, if you see what I mean :).  The views, usually so nice from the coast road, were non-existent.  It’s not easy taking photos when everything is being so uniformly boring, but I thought the old pier was looking nice and atmospheric.

It being a grey and miserable day, Weston was a relatively pleasant place to be, in a getting from A to B sense that is.  Not too many eejots in metal boxes, and not that many pedestrian grockles, but still too many traffic lights.  It does amaze me how slowly it is possible to cross the road…I mean really, do you not have places to be?  Candy floss to buy?  Fruit machines to feed?

I do like the long straight seafront section through Weston, mostly because I enjoy the fact that all the cars expect you to be doing no speed at all, whereas actually it’s possible to fair hurtle along there.  You do have to be a bit wary of SMIDSYs misjudging you though…but since it’s wide and fast and flat at least you can usually see them about to be prats even if they haven’t seen you!  Anyway, time to go up some more up, at the appropriately named Uphill, and then over Bleadon Hill proper.  I stopped 3/4 of the way up the latter because I love the way this tree has been allowed to grow around the cables, rather than being cut back completely.   There’s been a lot of tree-hacking going on around here lately, so it’s quite nice to see one left to do its own thing with minimal interference.  It was also time to take the next dose of pills, so two birds with one stone ‘n all that.

I wasn’t finished with hills yet. No siree jim bob.  After another nice descent, and some quiet country lane meandering, I had the option of going right at Loxton and home past the Webbington, but I had time in hand, a two hour rule to stick to, and besides which I was enjoying myself…so I took the left turn.  I don’t like wimping out 🙂  So it was along past Christon, and up the little kick of a hill to Banwell Castle, which can be a stinker but wasn’t too bad today.  Yes, we have a castle.  Kinda.  I gather it probably doesn’t count for castle purists but hey, it’s not like there are that many of them to go around out here, so beggars can’t be choosers ;).  It has peacocks too, but today they were only audible not visible.

See basically I’m doing all these ups to get me my downs.  You spotted that right?  OK, so I’m shallow *grin*.  And the down down the main road to Winscombe is a lot of fun :).  That just left me with one more hill to go up; the ever challenging Winscombe Hill.  Plod plod plod.  To be fair hills are much easier when you’ve done them before, because you know you can do them even if it’s going to take a while, and I’ve done this one a fair few times now :).

Once at the top there was a brief lull in proceedings for a quick drink and a foggy photo of the descent…before picking up speed proper and getting my favourite zoom home.  Irritatingly there was just enough wind around to make the bypass slightly underwhelming on the fun front, but such is life :).

As ever, we have the whole compare and contrast joy for my figures, since I haven’t yet completely gone over to the Strava dark side.  Time is coming…  So according to the usual cycling computer – even tweaked to check wheel size – I did this:

Cycling time: 2:13:01 hrs
Distance: 36.73 miles
AVS: 16.5 mph.

According to my route on Strava –  I did this:

Cycling time: 2:13:18 hrs
Distance: 34.0 miles
AVS: 15.3 mph.

ODO 12499

Being as I’m the only girl doing the Strava thing around here I’ve turned into the Queen of the Mountains in about 8 places around here now, which is laughable, but hey, if the crown fits ;).  I think I’d probably have been better off trying to beg, borrow, or steal a Garmin to use for the season, so as to get accurate figures, rather than adding this whole unnecessary competitive element to my riding – comparing myself to all the others out there is not good for my PMA!  It’s not a race, right? 😉