Back from holiday...
I spent the last week on holiday in Croyde Bay, North Devon, here's a long and slightly rambling blog if anyone's interested :-)
I had hoped to spend a lot of my holiday (when not surfing) riding around North Devon, unfortunately due to the weather, there was a lot less bike riding than I'd hoped :-(
To start with things didn't go well, in fact I almost didn't get to leave at all, because a few months back I'd dropped the bike (trying to u-turn on a hill) and didn't realise that the impact had bent the catch on one of the pannier holders so when I went to load up the bike just before I left, I suddenly discovered that I couldn't get the pannier to actually go onto the bike!
About three quarters of an hour kicking it, belting it with a half brick and then a hammer later, I managed to shift it enough that I could get the pannier secure meaning that I eventually left about an hour late. As such although I had planned to ride up the A36 to Salisbury and down the A30 to Exeter, followed by the A377 to Barnstaple, by the time I got to Exeter I realised that it would be dark whilst I was on the A377 which wouldn't be much good. Fortunately a quick tap on the Sat Nav took me up the quicker (but boring) A361.
The weather was fine on Friday for ride up, but the first three days were basically rainy and not worth going for a ride, so it wasn't until the Tuesday that it was good enough to go out and I had a nice ride up the A39 to Lynmouth (a lovely challenging bit of road with fast sections, twisty bits and some serious hairpins!) before heading south and then west to come back across Exmoor.
At one point I stopped on top of a hill (the name of which, alas, I've forgotten) which had an amazing 360 view of the horizon and, when no other vehicles were passing, was wonderfully quiet :-)
It was also good for another reason: I don't know why, but for the first three days I was *totally* not getting into the holiday and was quite literally sitting there thinking "what the hell am I doing here?" and counting the days (or number of sleeps) until I could get home again. I have no idea why this happened, I've not felt it before in the past 6 years I've done this holiday, but this time it was different.
Fortunately after the ride and then getting out for a "sundowner" (evening surfing session) when I got back, I felt a lot better and actually started enjoying myself.
I also got the chance to fly my Revolution EXP kite for the first time this year! (Having been busy doing other stuff and the lack of Summer previously and pretty much meant that I'd simply not had the chance before).
Coming home was also an eventful ride for other reasons: I'd looked at the weather on BBC News 24 which suggested that there would be rain around the Barnstaple area, but then it would be clear for the run down the A337 to Exeter
Unfortunately that turned out not to be the case and it pi$$ed down so much so that, by the time I got to Crediton, I thought "Sod this for a game of soldiers" and told the Sat Nav to find me the quickest route home figuring it would take me to the M5.
Well it did, but only did so via the A3072 and the A396 to Tiverton going via Cadbury which would have been a wonderful ride in the dry, but in the wet was an absolute bloody nightmare with me tip-toeing around bends which had streams of water running across them!
Finally I got to the M5 only to find it chock-full of Bank Holiday traffic which I could filter through but being wet and tired, wasn't as much fun as it usually is and eventually I pulled off at Taunton Deane just to have a break as I was feeling pretty lousy.
The good news was that I found that the weather east of there was clear, so a bit more fiddling with the Sat Nav took me back (more or less) to my original planned route and I actually started enjoying the ride at last!
So a bit of a weird holiday, but worthwhile in the end, I think, now I just need a holiday to recover from the holiday!
I had hoped to spend a lot of my holiday (when not surfing) riding around North Devon, unfortunately due to the weather, there was a lot less bike riding than I'd hoped :-(
To start with things didn't go well, in fact I almost didn't get to leave at all, because a few months back I'd dropped the bike (trying to u-turn on a hill) and didn't realise that the impact had bent the catch on one of the pannier holders so when I went to load up the bike just before I left, I suddenly discovered that I couldn't get the pannier to actually go onto the bike!
About three quarters of an hour kicking it, belting it with a half brick and then a hammer later, I managed to shift it enough that I could get the pannier secure meaning that I eventually left about an hour late. As such although I had planned to ride up the A36 to Salisbury and down the A30 to Exeter, followed by the A377 to Barnstaple, by the time I got to Exeter I realised that it would be dark whilst I was on the A377 which wouldn't be much good. Fortunately a quick tap on the Sat Nav took me up the quicker (but boring) A361.
The weather was fine on Friday for ride up, but the first three days were basically rainy and not worth going for a ride, so it wasn't until the Tuesday that it was good enough to go out and I had a nice ride up the A39 to Lynmouth (a lovely challenging bit of road with fast sections, twisty bits and some serious hairpins!) before heading south and then west to come back across Exmoor.
At one point I stopped on top of a hill (the name of which, alas, I've forgotten) which had an amazing 360 view of the horizon and, when no other vehicles were passing, was wonderfully quiet :-)
It was also good for another reason: I don't know why, but for the first three days I was *totally* not getting into the holiday and was quite literally sitting there thinking "what the hell am I doing here?" and counting the days (or number of sleeps) until I could get home again. I have no idea why this happened, I've not felt it before in the past 6 years I've done this holiday, but this time it was different.
Fortunately after the ride and then getting out for a "sundowner" (evening surfing session) when I got back, I felt a lot better and actually started enjoying myself.
I also got the chance to fly my Revolution EXP kite for the first time this year! (Having been busy doing other stuff and the lack of Summer previously and pretty much meant that I'd simply not had the chance before).
Coming home was also an eventful ride for other reasons: I'd looked at the weather on BBC News 24 which suggested that there would be rain around the Barnstaple area, but then it would be clear for the run down the A337 to Exeter
Unfortunately that turned out not to be the case and it pi$$ed down so much so that, by the time I got to Crediton, I thought "Sod this for a game of soldiers" and told the Sat Nav to find me the quickest route home figuring it would take me to the M5.
Well it did, but only did so via the A3072 and the A396 to Tiverton going via Cadbury which would have been a wonderful ride in the dry, but in the wet was an absolute bloody nightmare with me tip-toeing around bends which had streams of water running across them!
Finally I got to the M5 only to find it chock-full of Bank Holiday traffic which I could filter through but being wet and tired, wasn't as much fun as it usually is and eventually I pulled off at Taunton Deane just to have a break as I was feeling pretty lousy.
The good news was that I found that the weather east of there was clear, so a bit more fiddling with the Sat Nav took me back (more or less) to my original planned route and I actually started enjoying the ride at last!
So a bit of a weird holiday, but worthwhile in the end, I think, now I just need a holiday to recover from the holiday!