sam and the city

Good day faithful readers. Last weekend I ventured over to Somerset for the long weekend to ride in the Tour of Wessex (3 day, 325mile bike ride). It was to be memorable for numerous reasons.

Firstly, and this is quite sad to say, it was the first time that I had been out of London (within the UK) over the year and a half that I've been in the country, for any reason other than work. Up until last weekend, every time that I had left London I had had at least one of my work colleagues to keep me company!

Secondly, it was the first time that I had driven a car on UK roads, and unfortunately I got to do a lot more driving than I had hoped to do...

I picked up my car Friday afternoon and drove over to the metropolis of Yeovil, in Somerset. It was a trip which should take about 2hours, but one which took me about 3 thanks to the fact that I convinced myself that I was supposed to be getting on the M4 instead of the M3, meaning that I had to cut across the countryside once I had realised my mistake. The mass of people leaving London for their long weekend didn't exactly help matters either I have to say. As a result I arrived shortly after 10pm, and after getting some dinner finally got to bed at 12, only to have my alarm go off 5hours later.

Saturday morning was glorious. Sun shining brightly, clear blue skies, no wind, little bit of chill in the air, perfect conditions for the first 100miles. Given that the longest ride that I'd done prior to this was 55miles I decided to take it easy to start with in order to conserve energy. My plans were thrown into disarray somewhat however when we got to the first major climb after only 20km. After the first 200m I found myself struggling along in bottom gear. "I hope this isn't planning on getting any steeper" I thought to myself, just before rounding a corner and seeing the road seemingly head straight upwards! Standing on the pedals I managed to get to the top, which is more than I can say for a lot of people who were already having to resort to walking.
Thankfully this was probably the steepest hill of the day, but it certainly wasn't the last. In fact I would suggest that there was only a very small percentage of the entire route that was actually flat. Despite my lack of training I seemed to cope with this much better than most, constantly passing people every time the road started heading skyward. My shoulders and neck started to get a little sore at about the 110km mark, but I powered to the finish, averaging 28.5km/h, feeling really good.

The next morning I jumped out of bed ready for another day of riding through the beautiful Somerset countryside. Then I looked through the window and saw that the heavens had opened and it was pouring with rain. Nevertheless, I packed all my stuff in the car and headed to the start line, ever hopefully that the clouds would part and the sun would shine through. It was not to be. Knowing that I had 200km to ride the following day, and not particularly wanting to go hurtling down twisting roads in the wet, I decided that I would pull out that day and go and visit Bath instead.

Monday morning I arose and tentatively looked out the window again. It wasn't raining, but it wasn't looking good either. On the way to the start it began to rain, and with the car's temperature gauge reading 5C it was looking less and less hopeful. Sitting there, eating cold porridge, on the verge of developing hypothermia, I decided to throw in the towel. Disappointed, I jumped in the car, turned up the heating and headed back to London.