Day 3 Lejog Mortonhampstead to Street

Today we rode from Mortonhampstead to Street - 70 miles with 4,000 feet of climbing - much easier than yesterday. We were riding more North so we enjoyed a bit of a tail wind all day and no rain.

The route took us through quiet roads with high hedgerows with gentler, rolling hills. 

Ryan and Tracey heading into lunch at Broadhembury

Bikes at lunch

The first three lunches had all been inferior to what I remembered from four years ago. As their prices had been set a year ago, inflation was ravaging their profits. It made sense that they would have to cut costs somewhere so I didn't resent them spending less on the lunches. After lunch the riding was pretty much the same as before.

Speaking to our guides, Mike, Mark, and Wendy, they told me a lot of the B&Bs they used to use had gone out of business during the Covid shutdown so they were being forced to use hotels, which costs more. They hoped the B&Bs would come back because the riders and the organizers prefer them.

 After lunch the route was still lovely

Michele, the tandem, and the Australians

About eight miles from the end I tried to avoid a cluster of manhole and drain covers but a car was trying to pass me so at the last moment I tried to avoid them by going left but didn't see the curb and ended up close to it with my weight over it. I crashed hard and took a lot of skin of my calf, dug a big hole below my knee and also injured my left shoulder, right ankle, and right calf. It was ugly. Even worse, I tore my socks and arm warmers, and broke my GoPro mount. Amazingly the GoPro and Wahoo were OK.

Ouch!

I rode the last eight miles to the hotel in Street and Mark (the guide) made me go to the Minor Injury unit (like urgent care but restricted to injuries). I didn't want to go, but he was right to make me. They numbed my knee and pulled quite a lot of road out from under my skin. It hurt like hell. They put some stuff on the wound, then some dressings, bandages, and a surgical stocking. They gave me extra dressing and stuff and told me to redress it in two days. Can I ride? Sure, they said.

I was at the hospital an hour and they didn't charge me anything! Who says the NHS is no good?

While I was getting that dealt with, Michele was heroically doing our laundry. Thanks.

Lejog day 2 Fowey to Mortonhampstead

Today we rode from Fowey to Mortonhampstead. It's 64 miles with 6,400 feet of climbing making it the most difficult day in terms of total effort. It's pretty lumpy between Fowey and Plymouth with sustained grades over 12% and, just like last time, I had cramping problems. The Endurolytes I brought didn't seem to help so Michele gave me some Salt Sticks which helped enormously. I later threw my Endurolytes away and ordered Salt Sticks. We had a strong cross wind but the high hedges and walls gave good protection.

High walls protected us from cross winds

We seemed to have a new route through Plymouth, at least the traffic seemed less daunting and no toothless woman driving a Skoda verbally assaulted us. So that was good. We were soon on NCN 27 climbing up to Dartmoor. It's a wonderful ride with some light off-roading and totally traffic free.

Once we got up to Dartmoor the route flattened out a bit and we had a wide view all around. Here's the view from the second brew stop.

Dartmoor and brew van

I got the drone out to take some video but as I opened the arm it snapped where I had fixed it before so I couldn't launch it. I had brought super glue so I fixed it that evening. Would have been great video though.

Riding across Dartmoor is a bit scary because of all the sheep, ponies, and cattle grazing by the side of the road. Sometimes you're bombing down a hill and all it would take is for a cow to take three steps to be right in front of you. Some of them looked quite menacing, but we made it through without any problems.

Michele and I were one of the first to get to Mortonhampstead where we stayed at the White Hart which was a ridiculously expensive, but fairly nice pub. No rain today.

Lejog day 1 Lands End to Fowey

I decided to ride Lejog again this year with Peak-Tours, this time with Michele Brougher of Minnesota and Wayne and Melanie of Florida. I rented the bike again because it's so much cheaper than flying a bike back and forth across the Atlantic and their rental bikes are more suitable anyway.

I did a test ride with Michele from the hotel in St. Just to Lands End and back and the bolt holding the front mudguard to the fork fell out so they zip-tied it into place which caused a lot of rubbing issues until we figured it out.

I took Michele to the Cook Book and she had her first cream tea there. Two plain scones, clotted cream, strawberry jam, hot cross bun, pot of tea. She liked it.

Cream Tea at the Cook Book in St. Just, Cornwall

We started the tour on Sunday at about 9:30 riding from Land's End to Fowey headed into a strong, cold headwind. That's pretty much what I expected. We should pick up the tail wind on day 3.

Le Grande Depart

Riding along the coast through Penzance to Fowey, the scenery is amazing. It's 65 miles with about 5,000 feet of climbing so it's not easy.

Lunch was not as good as I remembered - just a sandwich, really. I was hitting the brew stops harder than last time. Michele tried millionaire's shortbread for the first time. I think she likes them.

The rain got to Fowey about 30 minutes before we did. The last climb with heavy traffic was a bit scary but otherwise the route was amazing. We stayed at the Galleon Inn and arrived quite hungry. Did the first of many loads of laundry here.

Saint Michael's Mount

Penzance

I fixed my drone

I fixed my drone with superglue. I should have removed the arm, fixed it, then re-attached it. But I didn't know you could do that until after I had fixed it. Oh well, next time. I'm sure there will be a next time.

I rode from Yorba Linda park to Beach City Provisions and back - 66 flat miles - on the Brompton. I have just put a 44 tooth chainring on it and this was the test ride. I like it. My top speed is limited to 20-21 mph which is fine because I don't often ride this fast anyway. My lowest gear is now 66" (distance traveled for one turn of the cranks). At 60 rpm, that's just about 3.75 mph.

I ate at Beach City Provisions again and had the cheese quesadilla while listening to Hotel California. Please excuse the wind - there was an enthusiastic head wind on the way out and a lovely tailwind on the way back.

In the video below, the guy on the left is playing guitar, the guy on the right plays sax, the woman sings, and the guy in the middle points to people.

Cheese quesadilla and monster

I love riding to Huntington Beach after work on Fridays. The drive, however, ...

I broke my drone

Friday evening after work I drove to Yorba Linda park to see if I could get a follow shot with my drone using the Litchi app. Here it is on YouTube.

As you can see, Litchi does a poor job of following and drifts off to the side quite badly. I had the controller on my aerobars and took my eyes off the screen for a couple of seconds to check for oncoming trail users. Litchi took the opportunity to fly my drone into a tree, breaking an arm. I think I can fix it with superglue.

After that embarrassing misadventure, I rode the Brompton down to Huntington Beach and started looking around for somewhere new to eat. It was cold and overcast with a 10-15 mph wind - I loved it! Just as I got to the beach I came across someone bent over an upside down bicycle. It turned out to be a young woman with a split tire. I offered to look for something we could use as a boot, but I could see she was uncomfortable we me being around. She said she had a ride coming, so I kept riding. There's no point trying to help someone if it just makes them nervous.

Turning West along the Pacific I got a nice tailwind and, as the weather wasn't great, there were very few people on the beach trail and I was able to take advantage of it.

I rode to Beach City Provisions, a convenience store and eatery with live music. I've never eaten there before, but the music pulled me in. They are very bike friendly and I was hungry so that was a good combination. I got a cheese quesadilla with chips and a side of fries for about $14. Live music and a beach view - nice.

 Of course, when I turned around I had a headwind which was only fair. Turning inland I got a nice tailwind and got my average up to 15.1 mph - not too shabby on the Brompton. It was a lovely ride.

There's a first time for everything

I have probably cycled over 200,000 miles as an adult but new things keep happening. Today's ride was one of them. Amber, Edgar, and I rode to The Crema today. I rode the Brompton to get a little better workout.

On the way back, Edgar hit a sharp metal object that sliced his Schwalbe Marathon tire open and blew out the tube. In the 100 yards it took him to find a good place to stop, the inner tube rotated a quarter of the way around the tire and the stem snapped in two. It was really odd looking for the stem and not finding it. I have dealt with many blow-outs, but never seen a tube do that.

I used a dollar bill as a boot, put a new tube in, and we rode the last six miles back to the cars at 10mph. I didn't want to ride too fast in case the boot failed and the tube blew out again. I only pumped the tire up to 50 psi on the assumption that a lower tire pressure would put less strain on the boot. I'm not sure if that's correct or not.

I could poke my finger through this hole.

A good weekend

Friday evening I left work early to try to beat the traffic to Anaheim and it helped a lot. I rode the Brompton from Anaheim to Seal Beach and back, eating at The Bistro St. Germain. On the way back I was passed by a roadie so I upped the effort a bit and jumped on his wheel. His surprise that I could stay on his wheel at 22 mph on a folding bike was priceless. We started talking and it turned out he's only a few years younger than me. We agreed it was wonderful to still be able to ride like this at our age.

On Saturday I rode a hilly 30 miles on Rouvy.

On Sunday, Amber and I met up at Yorba Linda park to ride a flat century. I showed her my drone and she loves it. She may be buying one to take to Europe on her and Edgar's honeymoon. I added a compressed version below, but uploaded a higher resolution version to YouTube.

The weather was cool and windy which made the century more challenging than it needed to be, but we had a great ride anyway. We ate at Bistro St Germain on the way out, turned around at 50 miles and ate there again on the way back. That's three times in three days for me. Our moving average was 16.3 mph which is fine considering 20 miles of it has a 10mph speed limit and the wind was 15-20 mph for most of the ride.

I just got a handlebar mount for the drone controller. I'm still trying to master some of the basic functions like follow and track. I need a lot of practice.