Tim Corrigan blogs on cycling, trips and programming…

This was really 4 very different rides all in one! It consisted of:

1. The advanced mountain biking course at Queen Elizabeth Country Park
2. From there following the Southdowns Way to the A29, just west of Amberly.
3. On the road to Burnham (from where I took a train to Havant)
4. The Hayling Billy Trail back to south Hayling Island.

Total: 39 miles – most of it offroad, and a great 6 hours training. Here is the route (terrain view gives you more of an idea):

View larger version at EveryTrail

I also used the trip to try out my new Tachyon XC Micro helmet camera for the first time. The following is my first dabbling in the world of helmet mounted video (much better efforts hopefully to come in future posts). The video is all of the advanced mountain biking course at Queen Elizabeth Country park – so gives a flavour of the riding there:

In a side note – I learned with interest recently that if you upload something to YouTube that incorporates copyright material (such as say… the music you put your biking video to) it is quite possible that it can be actively permitted to remain there by the copyright owner for various reasons… see this fascinating talk on how YouTube manages copyright material.

This summer I’ve commuted a number of times by bike. It’s approx 20 miles each way into London so it took a while to decide it was a serious proposition and try it. I’m so glad I did – I always arrive at work feeling alert and it’s been great for my fitness and fun learning the ropes of London bike commuting as well.

Below are some notes that you might find helpful if you are considering commuting anywhere in an East/West direction in the region of Egham, Staines, Ashford, Feltham, Twickenham, Richmond, Putney, Battersea or Clapham.

Route finding Tips

To start with I simply used Google maps to give me walking directions from home to work. This route was about as direct as possible whilst avoiding motorways. Since then it has made the commute more interesting to try out variations. Some of these are mapped below, along with some notes which could be useful for anyone commuting from Egham/Windsor/Staines etc. towards central London south of the river.

Points of note

• The A30 and A308 are fast dual carriageways and are worth avoiding. The route round the back of Staines station through Ashford and crossing the A308 is the only way around these without a major detour. As an alternative the A308 does have a path alongside which though not a cycle path is ride-able, if bumpy on road tyres.

• The A316 route north of Richmond has cycle lanes of varying quality along it. This is a little slow but useable, safe and direct. The alternative is straight through Twickenham and Richmond centres.

• Twickenham town centre is actually quite pleasant as it has a big bus lane straight through in the London bound direction and isn’t too bad in the other direction either.

• Richmond town centre is inevitably slow negotiating the queueing traffic but you are through it soon enough.

Test routes on EveryTrail

These show a few variations with me trying out different options:
Egham to Battersea commute 1
Egham to Battersea commute 2

The definitive Egham to Battersea route (this is my current preferred route erring on the side of safety)

View larger version of Egham to Battersea commute 3 at EveryTrail

I just did a training ride in Windsor Great park. I reckon I did the most hill climbing you can do in 1 hour in this area without backtracking/covering the same ground twice. 11.5 miles in total – not bad for a work night with the light rapidly fading.

Since (and this isn’t always the case using the GPS) the recordings of total ascent and descent came out almost the same on this trip I think the gradient graph is broadly right – 1568ft of climbing in total. Here is the graph from Everytrail showing speed and gradient. A few blips – for example, I don’t think I got up to 50mph..

And here is the route:

View larger version at EveryTrail

Today’s “light/family” ride was just that – but I managed to squeeze in a hill climb and a few extra miles as well. I did a nice 23 mile loop starting in south Hayling Island, taking the ferry over to Portsmouth as far as Southsea common and then returning via the Eastern road bike path, Portsdown hill for a view and then back to Hayling.

The first half was pulling a trailer bike as far as Southsea for some family swimming at the Pyramids. Then the trailer was detached and (with passenger) loaded into the car whilst I returned by bike on my own.

There are some decent cycle lanes on this route as you can see by clicking on the red dots on the map below. Especially nice is the new one (summer 2010) along Southsea sea front.


View larger and interactive version at EveryTrail

I’ve just completed my first training ride in preparation for my Atlas trip. With the help of my iPhone I found a rather nice route from Hayling Island to Petersfield and back. You can’t easily avoid the busy main road off Hayling or the centre of Havant but once I’d escaped Havant it was a lovely ride – undulating but with only one really tough climb – crossing the South Downs near South Harting on the way back.

I used the ride to try out a couple of route mapping apps on my iPhone. First up Trails Lite – this was working fine – but the free version stops after 5 minutes. So on to Everytrail for the rest of the route. It worked really well – I used it both to map my route and also to frequently stop and plan my next step as I was making it up as I went along. It’s easy to use – with all the features I needed easy to find.

The only major issue was with battery life (not the fault of EveryTrail!) – my phone died 2/3 of the way through – I’d expected this issue with iPhone trip mapping – as it stands it’ll be great for mapping training rides, but isn’t going to be up to anything longer. There are possible solutions to this (there are external extra battery devices, or upgrade to iPhone 4!) but that’s for another day.

Anyway – the EveryTrail route is below. I edited it on the web after to add the missing data. As you can see I totaled 42 miles – a good start to my training…

Hayling Island to Petersfield loop

Note that you can click on the red dots to see photos I took at those points. Or go to the EveryTrail site to see a larger/interactive version.

It was time again to visit the Afan valley for our yearly dose of fun, technical mountain biking trails. The same team as last year: myself, Andy, Mark and Chris arrived on the Friday night to get our very specific and convoluted instructions for parking from the land lady of our B&B before escaping to the excellent pub (the only pub for that matter).

Not wanting to start the riding with a hangover, after 2 pints i scanned the lighter options at the bar for something I thought I could get away with. “Ahh, how about a Mojito?” I announced. Nice try. Mark and Andy were very firm that ordering such beverages was not going to be part of the weekends activities. I managed to get away with a G&T…

Having last year felt the full force of each and every bump and scraped the skin off the inside of my thumbs from holding on for dear life to my v-brake levers, I decided to take the opportunity to try a full suspension bike for the weekend. So I rented a KHS from Afan Valley Bike Hire. This turned out to be a great decision as not only was the riding experience completely transformed but also the bike was delivered to our B&B early on the Saturday morning and I didn’t even have to wash it! I’d recommend hiring one of these to anyone thinking about riding at Afan who (like myself) doesn’t do enough technical riding to justify buying their own full suspension bike.

The weekend wasn’t without incident though. Chris had various mechanical failures – a broken chain in the first 30 seconds, numerous chain derailments and a rear derailleur fall to pieces half way round the Skyline. Thankfully, Mark was ready to help out with his trusty chain removal tool and all problems could be fixed on the trail. Not so for Mark himself though who suffered a leak and subsequent loss of all brake fluid in his rear brake. We were just half way up the first hill at the time so it was down to the shop at Glyncorrwg for repairs for him. Andy managed to fall off (also whilst climbing the first hill) and damage his thumb to the point where he couldn’t use it to grip the handle bars or change gear. He valiantly continued on and completed the skyline using his left hand to change both sets of gears.

My ride was incident free, though I did find by the end of the weekend I had suffered an onslaught of mosquito bites… over 100 PER LEG (I tried to count and gave up at 100), plus plenty more on the arms, neck and head. Thank goodness for my nice tight cycling shorts stopping them from getting anywhere else! The day after the trip I had to resort to spreading Anthisan over my legs like it was sun cream to try to stem the itching. All is good now though and despite the incidents we will definitely go back next year for more (though I will be wearing Jungle Formula insect repellent)…

I returned again this year to ride the London to Brighton bike ride for the British Heart foundation… along with 26,999 other official riders and several thousand unofficial ones.

Once again it was certainly not your typical bike ride with various unique elements:

• having to get off and walk quite a bit due to sheer density of other cyclists.
• an early start (I arrived at Clapham common before 6:30)
• an abundance of dedicated food stops
• one of the main challenges is to keep track of your team mates in the crowd!

We took quite a bit longer than last time (approx 6 hours) due to multiple punctures and the sheer numbers of riders but it’s not all about speed and we had a good ride. I’ll be back next year no doubt as part of team “Are we there yet”.

I just took part in the most unusual (and hard) cycling event I’ve been involved with to date. I was one of 9 riding a mixture of unusual bikes and ‘normal’ bikes for 92 miles around the lake district over 24 hours… in relentless rain.

The unusual bikes consisted of 1 tandem, 1 single speed recumbent trike, 1 hand cycle and 1 trandem. The hand cycle is best described as a wheel chair with a single front wheel on a steering column with pedals instead of handlebars! The trandem is similar, but with an additional rider behind (with foot pedals). The 9 participants swapped around bikes – so it was an all over body work out for all.

All of the unusual bikes were great fun to ride – though a whole lot tougher to ride up the hills of the Lake District than a normal bike – hence why the trip was a 24 hour event! (we did have 2 hours sleep in a tent) For the serious hills like Birker Fell, Cold Fell, Matterdale End, Whinlatter Pass and Kirkstone Pass we employed various strategies to get these bikes up them. These included others helping to push and pull – both mounted on normal bikes, and for the steepest – walking.

The event was to raise money for the Bethesda project – which will be setting up an outdoor activities centre specialising in people with disabilities in Burundi, Africa. Find out more about the Bethesda Project and support it if you can.

Last weekend Andy, Mark, Chris and I headed over to Afan forest in south Wales for some mountain biking on the custom built trails there. On the first day we rode the Penhydd trail, with a guide giving us some skills coaching including handling switch-backs, roots, and all sorts of other trail obstacles. Andy managed to fling himself over the handlebars but landed on a nice grass bank so all was well.

The night was spent in a B&B in Port Talbot – a town that although not blessed with beauty or wealth was nonetheless worth a visit for the experience (£9 for 7 drinks). The B&B also provided sherry in our room!

Day 2 was pure adrenaline on the White’s Level trail up the road with an hour and a half of technical climbing, followed by enough downhill that we were struggling to hold on to our bars by the end (I have blisters on my thumbs). Everyone came off the bike except me – I’m the cautious one (and therefore not that fast!) but all walked away without injury and a big grin on their face. We can’t wait to go back!

This year I joined up with Mark Sheppard to ride the British Heart Foundation London to Brighton ride. The ride is 54 miles on road from Clapham Common to Brighton beach and this year had 27,000 official riders.

This ride gave me the motivation to get out my road bike, which has been mostly sat in the shed the last 2 years as I have been concentrating on mountain biking. I got it out a few weeks before-hand and did some training rides on it – it was like a dream to ride again – so quick! I think Mark is pretty tempted to get one for next years London to Brighton.

I’d never taken part in a ride anywhere near this big before and it was awesome seeing so many cyclists.

Tim’s London to Brighton survival tips:

• No need to carry much in the way of drink or food – there are official and unofficial stops all over the place – even people giving away biscuits!
• If you are riding a mountain bike, get some slick tyres and get your bike checked over first.
• If you’ve not ridden this kind of distance before do some training, building up to at least a 30 mile training ride. Rest the few days before though.
• Don’t try to set any time records – with so many riders, getting out of London does take some time and it only take a few riders to get off and walk up a narrow hill to force everyone to walk.
• Save something for Ditchling beacon – it’s tough but do have a go at riding it – it really is all down hill after that and it’s pretty satisying overtaking all those people walking up.