Into double figures and also into the fourth week. Again I woke up early, so I decided to do a pre-breakfast run. There is something enjoyable about being up early on a sunny summer Sunday morning and being out doing something before most people are awake.
I wasn’t up quite as early on this particular Sunday morning as I would have been a few years ago when my friend Mike and I used to take part in the London to Brighton Cycle Ride. That involved getting up around four in the morning in order to be up at Clapham Common in time for a six o’clock start. I used to enjoy the ride up. Apart from others making their way to the start the streets were normally deserted apart from the occasional survivor of a heavy night clubbing trying to find their way home. The fifty-eight miles down the Brighton usually took between four and a half and five and a half hours, depending on how often we stopped for a cup of tea and how enthusiastic we were. We would then find somewhere for lunch. I would normally cycle back, Mike usually got the bus back. It was a good day out but we haven’t done it for a few years. Maybe next year.
That hasn’t actually got a lot to do with my Couch to 5k progress. It’s getting serious. The runs are now distinctly longer than the walks. A three-minute run with only a two-minute walk, followed by two, four-minute runs with a three minute walk then another three minute run to finish. I am managing it, and I think I am getting faster. I overtook a seventy something lady and her West Highland Terrier yesterday – going uphill.
Something happened last July that I genuinely did not think I would ever see. A British cyclist, Bradley Wiggins, won the Tour de France, and I was there on the Champs-Elysées to see him do it.
Obviously I follow the Tour de France religiously, even of it does mean tolerating Phil Ligget’s increasingly inane commentary. (Next year I am going to learn Flemish and watch it on Sporza.) By the end of the second week it was obvious that, barring a jour sans in the Pyrenees, Bradley Wiggins was going to win. With that thought in mind my mate Lord Wallington called me on the Monday suggesting that we make a trip to Paris to witness history.
” Brilliant idea” said I. So at five thirty on a bright and clear Sunday morning at the end of July, six middle-aged blokes set off for Paris in a car designed to seat five.
It was a fairly uneventful journey, punctuated only by a bacon roll and a cup of coffee while waiting for the shuttle and an inconsequential wrong turn on the peripherique. Somehow, we assumed by luck rather than judgement, Lord Wallington found a parking space just of the Place Charles de Gaulle (L’Arc de Triompe). Despite having to negotiate three roads coming off the Arc de Triompe we all made it to the Champs-Elysées to join the hundred thousand other Brits also there to see history made.
We had a few hours to kill while the peleton drank champagne and generally faffed about on their way into Paris. Finding something for lunch was in order. I was very pleasantly surprised to find a place just round the corner from where we had set up camp offering a cheese and ham sandwich and a cold beer for 5€.
The publicity caravan arrived shortly after lunch, and while reasonably entertaining for a while, partially clothed young men and women dancing to French disco music on top of a truck does get boring after a while. What I wanted was some cycling.
What he is advertising I’m not sureI think they are advertising bread
Finally at around four in the afternoon the peleton arrived on the Champs-Elysées. George Hincape led them onto the finishing circuit because this was his last ever Tour de France and he had been a participant in every single tour ever ridden, or at least quite a lot of them. Shortly after that the attacks started, most of them were fairly short-lived, but one attack featuring everyone’s favourite baroudeurJens Voigt and about a dozen others finally got somewhere and dragged out a lead of about 30 seconds. Sky and Liquigas kept it under control and with about a couple of laps to go it looked as if it was all going to come together when The Jensie took of again with a couple of companions. The move was always doomed to fail because Sky had decided that Mark Cavendish deserved a reward for all his faithful bottle carrying duties and sure enough with about 3km to go everything was back together. The Yellow jersey set about leading out the Rainbow jersey and shortly afterwards ‘Cav’ crossed the finishing line with his hands in the air.
Not that we saw any of that. Having positioned ourselves near the top end of the Champs, we caught a quick flash of the peleton every lap as it raced past our position at 55 kph. This video gives a rough idea of what we saw.
Neither did we see Wiggins presented with his trophy and final yellow jersey, but we did hear him announce the drawing of the raffle.
We hung around to watch the parade lap. After the race all the riders, and often the managers, do a lap of the circuit and in Sky’s case they included by Bradley Wiggins’ son. I did actually manage to get a photo of Wiggo in his yellow jersey, while he was doing the parade lap.
Maillot Jaune 2012
Maillot Jaune 2032? Peter Sagan showing off
After that it was time to head home. We stopped for dinner in a place called L’Isle Adam, just outside of Paris. A good steak-frites and a beer later and we were on our way back up the Autoroute to Calais and the last shuttle of the day.
We arrived back in Wallington about 2:30 in the morning. To quote Wallace and Grommit “It had been a grand day out.”
This morning I got up full of good intentions about what I was going to accomplish. The first priority was obviously to make breakfast and read the Guardian, from cover to cover, except for the sections that I don’t read. I had about 60% of this task completed when Mrsjohnm55 asked if I knew how to add some one to an email group. I know how to do it with my work email, but we use Lotus Notes at work, and because it is Lotus Notes, the method will be completely different to any other programme ever written. Being male I was reluctant to admit that I wasn’t sure how to do it in Windows Mail, because I have never needed mail groups for my private email. I came upstairs and opened up my email to work out how to do it. It turned out to be as simple as dragging and dropping contacts into the group. However..
One of my hobbies is Family History, and I subscribe to ancestry.co.uk to help with the research. One of the things they do is email you if someone else is researching one of your ancestors, and there in my in-box was an email telling me that some one had found something on one of my 3x great-grandmothers. I had tried to get a better handle on who she was for a while so I clicked the link. I checked out the information, it wasn’t a significant addition to what I already knew, it gave me an actual date of birth as opposed to the month and the year that I already had. Actually it might be the date of baptism, it wasn’t that clear.
This got me thinking about one of my other 3x great-grand mothers. Checking out her death certificate, I decided to find exactly where she had died. I couldn’t find the address on Google Maps. On a whim I typed into Google “Map of Kelso 1870”. This took me to the National Library of Scotland’s digital map archive. I found the address that she had died at. As I sort of guessed the street had been renamed sometime in the past century and a half.
Maps fascinate me, especially old maps. I don’t know how long I spent exploring the last three centuries of Scottish Borders via the maps I found in their archive, but it was a significant amount of time. If you like old maps have an explore of the site. It is first class and free. Just expect to lose an hour or two of your time.
I thought I might as well check Twitter (@john_m55) and that looks like an interesting article @so-and-so is tweeting about, I’ll check that out. That link in the article looks worth following as well. Should I look at my RSS feed to see if there is anything interesting there, of course there is, I wouldn’t be following these people if they didn’t say interesting things. Another half-hour gone. Might as well check Facebook before I shut down, nothing too much going on, except my sister tells me she has a friend who is cycling across the United States and is blogging about it, so naturally (cycling and cycle touring in particular is another of my passions) I had to check out his blog Bicycle Across America, more time gone.
And now I am blogging about it.
The new cycling season is barely a week old and British cyclists have so far recorded five wins, and only two of them from Mark Cavendish. Let’s list them:
We have come to expect Mark Cavendish to win most of the sprints that he contests,as he tweeted @MarkCavendish:
Well, that’s 2 wins from 2 contested sprints with @TeamSky. The lads were incredible at keeping me at the front of a hectic peloton. Thanks
Andy Fenn has just moved up to the ProTour level, joining Omega-Pharma Quickstep in the close season, and the Challenge Majorca races were I think his first ever races at this level, so it is a pretty good way to start. Jonathan Tiernan-Locke is still riding for a Pro-Continetal squad (Endura Racing), but he showed what he could do at last year’s Tour of Britain, when he won the King of the Mountains competition. His win came from a bold attack about two kilometres from the finish and managed to hold off the sprinters to hang on (just) for the win. In addition Adam Blythe (BMC) has been going well at the Tour of Qatar, picking up minor places.
So far it is looking good.
Update 12/02/2012 @ 17:30
Looking even better.
Jonathan Tiernan-Locke has won the final stage and the overall at the Tour Méditerranéen.
Below is a video of his 1st stage victory.
Video of J T-L’s stage four victory. The stage had to be shortened because Mont Faron was closed due to snow. I don’t know if that helped him or not, but you can only win the race that you are competing in.
I know that the Tour Méditerranéen isn’t the biggest race in the world, but it is a significant step up from the Premier Calendar. This could be the beginning of something big. Don’t forget his team Endura Racing are British and have won more stage races this year than Sky.
This is the last Sunday in January, and I know that, in London at least, the temperature will probably drop below zero for the first time since about this time last year. The signs that spring is on the way are unmistakable though.
The Belgian sorry, World Cyclo-cross Championships have just taken place. In the cycling world this means that winter is almost past.
More to the point though, to-day was also the day that Le Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise (L’Ouverture) took place. (The report and results link is in French.) For me, this marks the start of the cycling season and therefore the beginning of Spring.
Soon it will be Paris-Nice, Milan-San Remo, De Ronde Van Vlaanderen, Le Tour de France, all leading up to the Olympic Road Race in my back yard, on the roads that I ride week in, week out. Can’t wait.
Note: The domination by the Belgians (that’s a phrase that isn’t used too often) who took the first seven places, was only in the men’s championships. The women shared the honours around a bit more evenly, but even then, first and second were Dutch.
Further update 30/12/2011 16:30
GP d’Ouverture La Marseillaise 2012 – Highlights from France3
It is not going to be a theme of the blog, but I am diabetic and have been for about 25 years. Still as some one, probably my sister, once said to me; “John, diabetes doesn’t have to be a pain in the arse, there are lots of other places you can inject your insulin.”
All this is partly to explain why I found this video clip funny.
Still at least diabetics in the UK don’t have to spend half their lives arguing with Health Insurance companies. Well, for the time being at least.
A guy named Marcus Grimm made it. He blogs at Sweet Victory. His main theme is running marathons,
I’ll stick to cycling.
If someone can do a mash-up of the two of them it would make a perfect theme video for Team Type-1
There are no maps or elevation profiles for today’s journey. There was also very little cycling involved.
I needed to be at Heathrow by 11 o’clock on Sunday the 11th to collect Mrs johnm55 after her trip to Canada. (I also needed to be back at work at 8 o’clock on Monday the 12th). Cycling back home to Wallington unfortunately wasn’t an option. I could have probably thought up an excuse for not being back at work, but not picking Mrs johnm55 up at the airport…. I don’t like to think of the possible consequences.
As I had stayed the night with my sister and her husband, we loaded the bike back into the pick-up for the trip back to Duns to say cheerio to mum. My sister then took me down to Berwick to catch the train back to London. I put the bike in the guard’s van and settled down to make the return journey in fewer hours than it had taken me days to cycle up.
The East Coast Mainline follows roughly the same route as my bike trip, so as we flashed past various places I had been on the bike I took some photos through the window of the train.
The Tyne Bridges
The Angel of the North
York Minster – it is there honest
Having ate, drank and dozed my way back to London, I wheeled the bike out of King’s Cross Station onto the Euston Road ready to ride back home to Wallington. But… after a week of cycling on quiet back roads with about three cars per hour passing me, I decided that dicing with death and London traffic could wait for another day. So I wheeled the bike back to the station and onto the Thameslink train to East Croydon
The Galaxy on the train
I did have to cycle back from East Croydon, but I was up to that by the time I arrived.
The next morning I was up bright and early to make sure that I was at Heathrow in time to pick up a jet-lagged wife back from Toronto. We both had a good week.
Friday morning dawned bright and clear over Wooler. After a breakfast of porridge and toast I set off on the last leg of the trek to Duns (and what should have been last night’s evening meal). I was now back in the part of the world that I grew up in, on roads that I cycled long ago.
It was an easy day, just under thirty miles to ride and while it wasn’t flat there were no serious hills or wind to contend with. I decided to take the back road via Ford and Etal crossing the Tweed into Scotland at Norham. For the first part of the journey (as far as Norham) I followed National Cycle Route 68 although I ignored the off-road bits. Once you climb out of the valley of the River Till there are spectacular views across to the Cheviot Hills. Just over half way I crossed the Tweed into Scotland.
Writing about the Tweed and the Till reminded me of a dark little poem that I learned at school. The Battle of Flodden was fought near here and I think that the poem has its origin in the aftermath of battle.
Says Tweed tae Till,
“Why dae ye rin sae still?”
Says Till tae Tweed,
“Though ye rin wi’ speed,
whaer ye droon ae man
A droon twa”.
I was now in Scotland and took a photo of my bike to prove it
I forgot to take a picture of Norham Castle, so you will have to make do with Turner’s take on the scene.
After just over an hour’s ride through the rolling Berwickshire countryside I had reached my destination
By the time I had finished my shower and changed out of my cycling gear, Mum had lunch ready for me. It was a satisfying feeling to sit down to lunch knowing that I had cycled all the way from London to eat it. Later on my sister turned up with the pick-up to take Mum and I down to her house for dinner. I could have cycled there, it’s not much more than fifteen miles, but I was back wearing my normal clothes and I had done what I set out to do, so I put the bike in the back of the pick-up. Later on my brother and his wife turned up and we had a bit of a family reunion over my sister’s excellent food and probably a wee bit too much wine.
At least the wind died down today, or if there was any it was helpful, but we did find some hills. After two days in the flat-lands it was quite pleasant to be somewhere with contours.
Actually the first two-thirds of the trip was reasonably flat. I was climbing steadily and there were hills to my left and right but the roads were quiet (excluding the first few km up the A19) and it was pleasant cycling. It was only after Richmond, going on into Co. Durham that it became necessary to shift into the Granny Ring now and then. Continue reading Bike ride to Scotland: Part 4 York to Eggleston→
A Scotsman in Suburbia 