WeeHoo-ing out 2015

Rhoda's Striderbike has been a hit, but we decided that one more ride as a family was on the cards for 2015, so with the trailer folded up, out came the WeeHoo for another run. Rhoda is still a bit small for it so the colder weather gives us an excuse to put the girls in their snow suits (obtained for buttons courtesy of the Dare2B online clearance!)

I'm rapidly growing in confidence with the WeeHoo and its peculiar centre of gravity. So, too, are the girls, and it is definitely much easier to load them and get everything ready, with two pairs of hands. Rhoda cried again early in this afternoon's run but, soon after, had nodded off! After a few laps of the bandstand, Katie was able to sit on my wheel to observe, and reports that it really is very stable and that we can have confidence in both how it tows and how the girls get on with it. We need now to look at pannier solutions. So far nobody seems to have done it with the 2015 model and its asymmetric rear arm. If it requires a welded solution, we want to give it a fair test in standard form, first!

Ruth borrowed her brother's Swisseye 'Young' glasses for eye protection; we were very impressed with the fit on her smaller face, and with the way she left them totally alone under her lid, thoughout the ride.

I dared to bring Katie along the cycle paths we tried in the autumn, which were a pain in the proverbial and littered with broken vodka bottles. Needless to say we returned home once more on the road, much happier with our lot.

Our little microadventure complete, we returned to the house and went off to the gym for a swim. I dropped a quick 1k on the rower as well, in a new PB. There's a turn-up for the books!

We've not covered quite the ground we'd hoped over Christmas. The weather's not played ball and we've had other things to contend with, but we are well set up for 2016. Happy New Year everyone - where will the coming year take you?

Raining, nuts and bolts

Today's BBC weather forecast, like yesterday's, was somewhat off target. Just as we were getting ready to set out, rain came, about four hours ahead of schedule! In the end, vacillating between the intended trip and 'Plan B' (a long day trip to the National Cycle Centre at Manchester Velodrome) I eventually decided 'blow it, let's just get wet'. As we set off, the rain stopped.

We've lived in Northamptonshire for nearer three years than two now, but for various reasons have done precious little riding beyond the hundreds, if not thousands of laps of the bandstand we've done with the children, and the odd trip down the traffic-free path where I took Thomas Ivor to practice riding a laden bike. It is therefore something of a surprise to discover that even by British standards of driving, the attitude towards cyclists round here is very poor indeed.

Over the last few weeks I've been purposely driving round our town and its environs by odd routes, trying out different permutations and scouting out bits of cycling infrastructure. I've found very little that I would choose to use with the children, and pretty much none that I would use on my own. Width restrictions. Chicanes. Poorly maintained surfaces. STUPID DOG WALKERS! There's a rant for another piece of its own one day if ever there was one. As ever, contrary to the perception of most non-cyclists we talk to, we felt much more at home and safe on the road, being 'buzzed' by idiots in Evoques and Audis who didn't trouble to leave us much room or indeed see if anyone was coming the other way.

Anyhow, there was a purpose to our trip today. Thomas Ivor arrived from Devon last night for an unexpectedly lengthy weekend visit at the end of his half term, about which we are very happy. I decided that with the turn of the season, I really should fit the Busch and Muller lamp brackets we were kindly sent by the rep whom the girls and I met at the NEC recently.

When you have a handlebar bag, headlamp mounting becomes a little more challenging, and whilst I would love to have a posh dynamo lighting system, for the amount of night riding we do, the cracking Ixon 50 USB battery headlights we have are proving to be a super piece of kit (review coming soon). If you want to keep your bar bag on at night, you ideally need your headlight on your fork crown.

A nearby airfield also plays host to a cracking nut and bolt supplier, so going on the bikes and being able to be sure we had the right lengths and diameters was eminently sensible; £2:50 later we had everything we needed. The heavens opened on the way back but unperturbed Thomas Ivor and I braved it out, whilst the girls sat in the trailer singing nursery rhymes - snug, warm and dry. I have to say, despite the load it felt easier and the time passed more quickly than it does at the gym...

Tonight, Thomas Ivor has learned how to patch inner tubes and I have fitted his front lamp bracket as the first of the three that need doing. It always seems to be the case that fiddling with mudguards, racks and anything attached to your handlebars is always more bothersome than it ought to be. Something always won't reach, or isn't the right shape, or takes an age to adjust. I've learned to take satisfaction in getting it right rather than constantly being cheesed off about it, at which I am really rather pleased. It's good to involve the children in the mechanical tasks at a leisurely pace because it allows conversations you just can't have when you're fixing something on the road with time/light/patience/tools at a premium.

Thomas Ivor's Islabike now sports some new stainless steel rack bolts (one fell out somewhere in Lincolnshire and we forgot about it!), a set of lights nobody can claim they didn't see, his new Ortlieb bar bag has done the business and I'm not sure there will be a better-specced touring version out there. If and when he picks up his first puncture on it, after tonight, he should be able to fix that, too!

Chasing the day

I left the tent quietly at dawn and as I showered by the light of a lazily-flickering hurricane lamp, contemplated the challenge ahead. We were a day down.

The itinerary I'd designed had recovery time built into it, for just such eventualities and to make sure we made it to St Malo for the ferry home, but to shift the next few days' arrangements back a day would wipe out our margin for the rest of the trip and be a serious logistical headache. Ideally, we had to pull back a day's mileage and get back on track within three days, so we arrived with our first 'Warmshowers' hosts, Morgane and Marin, on time.

If we could do two days in one, I figured, we would give ourselves the least to do - doing two 'days and a half' would require a new overnight stop as well as two cancellations.

We weren't the only ones a day down - the weather yesterday had delayed other cyclists on the campsite, and I gave them a wave and wished them luck as they got on their way. We still had the tent to pack away! I got back to the tent and used my recording of the music from the ferry to wake up those of the team who were not already climbing over the others.

Saying goodbye to Judi at the campsite

We bade farewell to our friends at the campsite, drawing a sharp and disbelieving intake of breath from one chap (whose children were merrily lapping the campsite on their bikes) when we said we were considering a 40+ mile day with Thomas Ivor and the girls. We knew we could do it because we'd done it before - but it's amazing how often strangers think they know your capabilities better than you do! Nothing like the disbelief of others to fuel you as you hit the road.

Back we rode towards the Réseau Breton. As we did so, Katie took her first 'scalp' with the trailer, overtaking a family with a horse-drawn caravan. I'm not sure where they stood in comparison to one another on power:weight ratio, but downhill, the horse and steel-tyred caravan were no match for Mrs J and her Croozer!

Down at the station, the caravan we'd seen on Monday night was hurriedly departing, likely in some way connected with the presence of the Gendarmerie in their van at the top of the path! These guys looked a lot rougher, possibly Romanies, but it was tricky passing them on a bike, never mind with a trailer, on a path barely as wide as their outfit and decidedly soggy at the edges. As ever, it seems, no piece of 'cycling infrastructure' ever caters exclusively for cyclists. Either you have to share it with cars, pedestrians, or in this case, horses.

Aside from a couple of such encounters, and cows crossing the route at one point, the path was a bit depressing, truth be told. What must have been a beautiful and challenging piece of railway has been allowed to be turned by nature into a 'tree tunnel' for much of its length, totally isolating the cyclist from the surrounding countryside; it may as well be Bedfordshire as Brittany. The path, saturated by two days of rain, offered considerable resistance but limited grip. It was something of a grind - to the point where even on a slightly falling gradient there was no prospect of rolling freely. The guide book suggested that the surface would deteriorate and so it did as we zoned in on Carhaix. If we couldn't make Carhaix as our first leg of the day, we weren't going to make up any lost distance.

We got as far as Poullaouen (which looks more Welsh than French as a place name!) and I decided I'd had enough. We scrambled up onto the road and found some of that lovely, smooth, tarmac stuff we'd almost forgotten existed. The road was hillier than the railway, but we decided we'd happily deal with that; it immediately felt like we had returned to France. Unfortunately, our pace to that point meant that lunchtime was slipping away. We would have to ride well into the evening to do today's mileage as well as yesterday's.

Our departure from the railway route deprived us, very sadly, of the sight of the steam locomotive on the path nearer to Carhaix, which was a real shame, but we had to press on. Arriving at the edge of town, D54 got busier and we raced towards what turned out to be a stonking great hill, on a bend, to get to the town centre. It was like Dawlish all over again, but bigger, and in the heat of the day. We found another way up the hill, on a shaded road with almost no vehicular traffic at all, and ferried people, bikes and trailers up as a team effort.

Thomas Ivor captured the second of what was ultimately four legs shuttling us and our kit up the hill into Carhaix.

Carhaix-Plouguer is a pleasant little town. We rolled round the one way system in search of somewhere suitable to eat (Katie catching a kerb and having one of those embarrassing, slow-motion-falling-off episodes whilst also looking for an ATM), somehow crossing paths four times in the process with a fellow cyclist who had passed us on the path earlier in the day, but as the guide books warn of much of France, if you miss the 1200-1400 lunch period, you can expect to find a lot of places not serving food, or indeed totally 'fermée'. As cyclists and particularly with the demands of the children, it is harder for us to conform to this pattern; you learn to carry more cash than usual, and to take what is available, when you find it. In all fairness, this doesn't work out too bad, because the discerning French don't tolerate poor food, and we haven't been sold a duff or hideously pricey meal anywhere we've stopped so far. The children have definitely eaten better than usual, Thomas Ivor and Ruth especially so. We must aim to take something of this home with us.

Lunch had to be a picnic from the supermarket in the end, in the company of a statue of three old Breton ladies who periodically sang, with water squirting (without warning) from the floor around them! Katie was at least able also to find a jeweller's shop to buy some ear studs from - one of the more bizarre items to have forgotten!

Looking once more at the plan, we decided that, since combining the next two days on the route amounted to a smaller daily total than trying to do a double stint today, we would get ourselves to the site we should have stayed at last night, and have another go tomorrow. It wasn't that we couldn't do it - more the case that tomorrow should be better. Despite the dodgy roads, my wheel has held up, albeit now running a very low pressure to cushion it. I'd rather a puncture than a broken spoke, I figure.

As we left town, we passed the railway station - this one, almost disconcertingly, open, as part of the portion of the Réseau Breton that was upgraded to standard gauge in later years. The GPS showed me a street name I had to get a picture of Thomas Ivor with - if one day he ever does make it round the world on his bike, it will be priceless - although I fancy he will need more than 80 days...

All this being so, thanks to our earlier push, we've arrived earlier than we might have done yesterday at Maël Carhaix, on a beautiful and very cheap municipal campsite (no toilet paper!) with barely a soul on it. The advice that Brittany's interior is quiet even during the French holidays has been well worth following, thus far. We have a field almost to ourselves, the girls have made friends with one particular tree near the tent, the pasta is cooking and I've even had time to set up the camera to do some filming; there's a lake, play area, and all the amenities you could reasonably need for a night's stopover. All for something like €8. We're still chasing that day and we must do something tomorrow, but I can think of worse places to prepare!

Donkeys, parking, 'splash and crash'

We slept well at the campsite, until the usual problem emerged, and it's always worse when the girls haven't been in the tent for a little while - they wake at daybreak! Fine for them, because they can sleep it off in the trailer, but not so handy for the other three of us. Being on a working farm, and having picked up some eggs the night before, the rooster that sealed the deal and made sure we were all well and truly awake shouldn't have come as much of a surprise!

Within half an hour, we'd all nodded off again, and so by the time we surfaced, we weren't as washed out as we ought to have been after our exertions the previous evening.

We were really shocked to find that such a beautiful spot, and a site with plenty of pitches, was empty but for our tent, during the school holidays and decent weather, but it was wonderful to be able to let the children roam, and before we knew it, they had made friends with a pair of rescued miniature ponies, 'Tosh' and 'Tug'. 

Porridge and donkey rides contributed to a leisurely departure, but we knew that only 20 miles lay ahead of us if we left the Humber Bridge to start day three. There was no hurry, and after a mile or so's riding we paused at a bakery for a second breakfast.

We pottered along, hurriedly crossing the A15 on foot (if you're slow getting rolling, sometimes it's just easier to cross the big ones perpendicular to the traffic, and run!), perhaps not contemplating enough what we might do for lunch; by the time we reached Brigg we hadn't seen anywhere that looked like it was serving food and suitable for our outfit.

Sometimes, you reach a town and everything seems to be on hand; other places you reach and you just get an inkling before you even get in, that it's going to spit you out before you've had chance to think about it. I have no doubt that Brigg has all sorts of lovely facilities, but the main road through town offered us Tesco as the best opportunity for lunch.

I have all sorts of issues with Tesco - but right at that moment, a quick stop in their cafe seemed like the best chance of getting fed, stocking up for the night, and getting rolling once more. The trouble was, the cycle parking was a total joke - you could not stand a bike up in the rack, such as it was, because it had been put hard up against the wall rather than allowing room for wheels to protrude. In the end, we improvised and a very cycle-savvy and slightly embarrassed chap, who was otherwise looking after the trollies, looked after our bikes personally. The store turned out to be tired, poorly stocked and had no cafe at all, so we got out of there with some sandwiches, rode out of town and found a bus shelter on the edge of a housing estate for lunch.

A word about cycle lanes. Coming out of Brigg on a fairly busy road, I saw what looked like a generously proportioned cycle lane set away from the road, which in the first instance meant Thomas Ivor, whose wheel I was on, could avoid a busy roundabout. I persevered with it for all of a mile before Katie and I stopped and agreed that riding on a split path (pedestrians and cyclists notionally separated, but on a path not wide enough to pass freely on) where you had to give way at every single junction to the left, was far more risky for Thomas Ivor and stressful for us 'sergeant-majoring' him, than just holding a sensible line on the main road. On reflection, we shouldn't have been surprised that the little guy agreed - riding the road was less complicated for him, and he didn't mind the traffic.

Any suggestion that Lincolnshire is flat as a pancake is not strictly true. A bit like Norfolk, whose Northern coast is anything but flat, Lincolnshire has a few 'lumps' just to keep you on your toes. As we homed in on the Humber Bridge, one sharp rise, which we'd seen coming for a while, strung us out. The traffic was light but fast, and the twisting of the road as it rose meant that as I flogged up on foot, taking my turn with the trailer, I had to be careful to move quickly when I couldn't be seen well, and rest as and when the verge had space for me. There's no point killing yourself trying to ride up with a heavy loaded bike, when walking is quicker and more efficient - that's something you lose your hang-ups about quite quickly when you're towing. What tends then to happen is that the girls either decide to start cheering you on, or, more often than not, implore Daddy to 'go faster'! By the top of the hill, on foot, I'd dropped Thomas Ivor and Katie, who were 'riding and resting' - and a tired Ruth was becoming irritable with Rhoda trying to tickle her under the chin. The wind was getting up, the rain was closing in, but from the top of the hill, we could see the Humber estuary. If only the campsite we wanted would answer the telephone, we might get pitched before we got wet!

Peeling away from the side of the main A15, the old Brigg Road drops down into Barton-upon-Humber, depositing one in what feels like the heart of town. Faced with the prospect of riding on into the now steadily falling rain, for more miles, away from the bridge, that might be fruitless and force us to retrace, I looked dead ahead as I waited at the junction for Katie to catch up, and something told me the hotel I was facing was worth an enquiry.

It is rare that we stay overnight in a hotel, and even rarer that it isn't a hurriedly booked Premier Inn. Part of that is down to the homogenous nature of the latter, when you are a sizeable tribe with peculiar needs. I stood in the rain, holding two bikes, trying to distract Thomas Ivor and taking muttered abuse from pedestrians, wondering what, if anything, might be on offer.

The George Inn turned out to be a wonderful place to stay, a characterful place accredited for both 'Families Welcome' and 'Cyclists Welcome' under the respective Visit England schemes. We had a really great time, enjoying superb food and really attentive care from the staff. We will write a separate review in due course. From contemplating a bowl of pasta on a rainy campsite, we sat down to steak and chips. Sometimes, that's just the right thing to do.

Tomorrow starts with a crossing of the Humber Bridge, hopefully without too much wind!

Getting some more miles under our belt

Yesterday, we nipped out for a ride before the tail end of tropical storm Bertha hit.  We set off down the cycle path along the disused railway line from Stanwick Lakes to Thrapston, turning off the path and taking to the road to ride through Denford and Ringstead.

Our new Ortlieb handlebar bags arrived last week, so having fitted them we took them out for a test run.

The path was busy with people walking, and the surface was very badly potholed as we got closer to Thrapston.  Bumpy track and potholes are more of a challenge with the trailer.  There were a LOT of big potholes on this path, and finding a route through so that both trailer and bike wheels avoided the worst of it left me zigzagging a very peculiar path, and absolutely killed our average speed (down below 6mph!).  The terrain didn't bother the girls - both dozed off mid- ride, but the grown ups were pretty happy to turn off the rutted path onto some Tarmac as we crossed the A14.

The biggest headache of the day was getting in and out of the gate at the end of the path (below), which proved impossible with the trailer.  We had to unhitch and lift it over, but we managed without too much fuss.