Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Tag: Cycling

Plotting the way to Les Gets

My cycling trip to Les Gets is getting closer, the bike is getting its handlebars changed with new gear shifts and brake handles, so hopefully my back won’t be crippled like what was happening with the previous dropped bars, now purchased the same saddlebag as I had as a kid, unbelievably the design hasn’t changed in 50 years!

Calais to Les Gets

Just discovered the bikely website where vigusmao has kindly uploaded a gpx file of the London to Dover section. Now furiously plotting the Calais to Les Gets section using memory map so I can have that route in the GPS as well. The route looks great taking in The Champagne region 🙂 and The Somme river. Still trying to find a way over The Jura to get into Geneva without hitting any busy roads

Thinking about setting off on Saturday so Sally can do the Cambridge to London bit with me, which then means I can navigate my way through London early on Sunday morning.

Now the question is should I take my tent?

London to Cambridge bike ride

Today was the annual London to Cambridge bike ride. (For some reason they have removed the web page with the actual ride on it!) Which I’ve been doing on and off for the past 20 years or so, today was the first time for perhaps 5 years…..

Unfortunately, for Sally and I, the ride has become very popular and so all the buses carrying folks to the start at Picketts Lock were full 🙁  We were thinking of going up last night on the train and staying over at a B&B, but this is England and B&Bs think that £70 a night is fine and oh minimum stay two nights at the weekend….

So we created our own variant which meant leaving home at 6am, cycling down to the halfway point until we met el speed merchants who had left Picketts Lock at 7am then turning around and coming back with the  crowd. Here is the ride on Everytrail:-

Partial London-Cambridge bike ride

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We did over 841 metre of ascent as we obviously did it both ways! and about 58miles of cycling by the time we arrived home.

Can I do this every day for 12 days or so to do the 600miles to Les Gets. Today has made by back really ache which is probably the drop handlebars on my Falcon. Otherwise I felt fighting fit..

Here is the elevation and speed data:-

Cycling again after 40 years……

Its been in my head for a long time to cycle down through France, in fact checking my Quicken I can see that I treated myself to a new bike for £669.98p for my birthday 10 years ago! A bike that has not been used for over 9 years ……

Finally I’ve decided to bike to my ski apartment in Les Gets, not in the winter season 🙂 but in the next few weeks. As the crow flies its 800km or about 500miles. After enduring Peruvian and Ecuadorian driving for the past few weeks I’m pretty well OK with roads now…..

The bike is booked into Howes, on my birthday, in a couple of weeks, to get it into shape, in the mean time I thought I would get myself into shape by doing a bit of training. Here’s today little ride of 21.5 miles cycled at 12.5mph so not bad as a starter 🙂

Watlington to Gayton bike ride

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Blackpool to Edinburgh
Les gets
Dover to Les Gets

In my youth my longest ride in a day (I was about 17/18)was the 200miles from Blackpool to Edinburgh and doing 100mile days was pretty normal at the weekends,  so lets see if the leg muscles have weakened with age.