First look at Wild cycling by Chris Sidwells: UK gravel and adventure route book

 

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Wild Cycling by Chris Sidwells

I got word yesterday that there was a new guide book that would appeal to me, Wild Cycling by Chris Sidwells. Not only that, but it was on offer, and who doesn’t love a bargain? Heading over to Amazon I saw that it was available for a mere £4 versus its RRP of £12.99! Seeing as £4 doesn’t get you a magazine these days I ordered it without further ado.

As it only dropped through the letterbox today, this will just be a quick look at what it offers.

A quick flick through the images shows a clear theme, these are rides for cyclocross/gravel/adventure road bikes. The Wild in the title refers to how out there the rides are, rather than their technical difficulty.

There are 50 rides listed which are grouped in regions, South & East, South & West, Wales, Midlands, North, North-East, North-West, and finally Scotland. With between 5 and 10 rides per region you shouldn’t have to travel too far to experience a route.

Each ride has an intro alongside a general location map and details to help you find the start. There are also simple maps showing the suggested direction of travel and features you might encounter and an elevation chart that will either inspire or cause anxiety! I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to read the book, and hopefully try out one of the routes!

 Order form Amazon 

Epic ride guide: The Bearbones 200 Bikepacking race

 The Bear Bones 200 is not so much a route as a concept. Since it’s inception in 2011, the BB 200 has used five different routes, what they’ve all had in common was being a single loop of just over 200KM and starting in Llanbrymair in Powys.

Expect a lot of this on the BB200 

The brainchild of Stu Wright (the man behind Forest Freeride and the Bear Bones bikepacking forum) the BB200 has a simple premise, complete the course in under 24hrs to earn a black badge with blue and green badges as consolation for taking progressively longer time to finish. So it’s simple, ride around at an 8.5kph average and collect your badge with a smile on your face, right? Wrong!

The first clue you might be underestimating the challenge is in the event details, as a sleeping bag and bivi bag are mandatory equipment and the FAQs state that not all the terrain will be able to be ridden……

So what can you expect then? There’s always a warm welcome at the start from Stu and Dee and a cuppa to prepare you for the off. Once on the route you can expect to experience every kind of terrain that Mid-Wales and the Cambrian Mountains can offer, and it’s surprising just how welcome a brief respite from pushing (up and down sometimes!) a quick stretch of fire road or tarmac can be! Outside of the Scottish Highlands Mid-Wales can stake a claim as one of the most remote feeling places in UK. It’s not uncommon that the majority of people you meet on the route are your fellow riders.

BB200 Finisher badges

While 2014 has passed Bear Bones 200 Folklore as being difficult, even by the event’s standards, Stu can usually be relied upon to create a route that just stays on the right side of enjoyable. It might be that it takes a few hours to register, but whatever people say on the day, the BB200 continues to sell out each year!

So why do it? It’s a significant step up from a 24hr XC race as the course is a single loop so there’s no passing a pit and grabbing more supplies, you also don’t get the chance to “learn your lines” as you might on a closed course event. As hinted at earlier, the Cambrian Mountains make for a stunning setting that really feels like an adventure to ride through, especially with 4-5000 metres of height gain over 200km! The internet is full of tales of amazing rides, the problem being that The Real World© makes jetting off to South America for a month, if you want to challenge yourself and just have a weekend to do it in, the Bear Bones 200 won’t leave you feeling short changed!

Review: Exposure Flash & Flare bike lights

 

Flash & Flare with mounts and charger

The Flash and Flare have been a staple of the Exposure range for some years now. In fact, I can’t quite remember when I bought my set, sometime in late 2012 or early 2013 and they weren’t a new release then! So this is a review of an item tested over at least four years! I was for a while an advocate of those bargain Cree LED lights that are all over eBay, you know, a claimed 7000 lumens and with a worrying name with fire in it. It was a 120km winter ride and a failing cheapo light that led me to try Exposure and see whether the higher RRP was justified over an eBay special.

The ride was an 80 mile loop taking in Tunstall and the bridleways of the Sandlings on the Suffolk Coast, and being November lights were an essential. I was equipped with my Chinese specials and James had a Flash & Flare and a Joystick, at the time a whopping 4-500 lumens?

It was here I had my rude awakening. Firstly eBay lumens are often wildly over estimated, if you are lucky they are based on the theoretical maximum an LED might manage in a lab in ideal conditions, at worst they are a blatant lie. Secondly, there is a difference in quality  versus quantity. My eBay specials might actually have been brighter the light pattern just scattered every where. The truth was, despite modest lumens the Exposure lights just did a better a job of lighting the way, kind of the whole point really!

So back to the flash and flare. I opted for the rechargeable set, more expensive initially, but having rechargeable batteries means there is no need to “save” the batteries and the type used aren’t all that common to buy spares. There is also that whole environment thing too. In the box is a quick start guide, both lights, a pair of batteries and the plug/charger unit. In 2013 this cost in excess of £60 and I’m pleased to report that at the last check the same set will now only cost £50 albeit on clearance. This seems to be because the proprietary charger plug has now been replaced with a USB cable. No great loss as I expect most households/workplaces will have a number of USB chargers to hand. Additionally Exposure also offer the functionally similar Trace and TraceR  feature built in batteries and micro-USB charging ports.

In use the lights can be a bit fiddly to operate, but you soon learn the knack of twisting the light head to operate them and alternate between flash and static beam. For such small lights they pack an amazing punch. While primarily for being seen you could almost use the flare to light your way. To aid your being noticed the twisting section is translucent so allows for some sideways illumination as well. The flare can spin in its mount but the flare slots into a notch in its mount and stays put. Despite use on some very rough trails neither light has ever been ejected. Run-times are similarly impressive, even now after 4 years of use the batteries still give a useful light over a winter dusk until dawn night ride.

Along the way they have however needed some TLC,  such as a light scrub of the terminals and a dab of grease to keep corrosion at bay and stretching the spring that supports the battery. I believe it was the flash that also required a new o-ring, but all in all not much effort for the hours of use they have provided, unlike the eBay specials that have long since been consigned to the bin. The image below shows mine after four years of use. The Flash is a bit grubby but you can see where a succession of bike-packing seat packs have worn flats onto the alloy body of the Flare!

Four years later….

In summary then, highly recommended if you need reliable, bright and resilient I’m here lights and you don’t mind investing for the future. Should these ever let me down then I’ll be sure to replace them with a Trace/TracerR combo or whatever Exposure are producing then!

After the divide: Coping with riding after the Tour Divide

 

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It’s been a long while since I’ve blogged, but having recently finished The London-Edinburgh-London Audax I thought it was time to recount on what I’ve been up to and how my cycling habits have changed.

Turn back the clock a year or so and I’d just about got over my Tour Divide comedown, re-acclimatised with normality, had a thousand photos and crazy stories to tell and… nothing. I tried typing up my ideas but had trouble motivating myself and recounting the whole experience just made me long to be out there doing it all again.

How can any cycling event ever compete with the feeling of the Tour Divide?

Simply put, the Tour Divide was simply fantastic, nothing to worry about apart from getting on my bike and riding as far as I could each day and therein lies the rub… arriving back in Suffolk to traipse the same old trails when you’ve been riding a fresh century each day is a bit of a disappointment.

Still, there was the Winter XC Series to look forwards too, right? Really, 4 hours of lapping the same 4-5 miles of forest. No thanks.

Looking through the calendar of local events in the area didn’t inspire me either, after several years of doing the same old ‘race round a country estate or commercial forest for 24 hours’ MTB endurance thing, I’ve grown totally bored of it.

So, how do I get motivated to do some longer rides, see new places and reignite that spark? Turn to skinnier tyres!

I started to look into the secretive world of the Audax. The appeal was obvious, long rides, cheap entry fees and no doing short laps over and over…

The all important Brevet card

My Pinnacle Arkose by now has transformed from a reluctant purchase into the bike I enjoy riding most. I don’t feel like I’m ruining it like I do my “nice” road bike and it makes my Salsa Fargo very sluggish. Paired with two wheelsets, one with WTB Nano 40cs and the other with Panracer Gravel King 32c slicks, it’s 90% as good as anything you’ll need here in Suffolk.

And with a pair of Crudracer Mk3 mudguards fitted I pressed the Arkose into service in January at my first ever Audax, The New Year QE2 100k starting from Swaffham in Norfolk.

For those unfamiliar with Audax events the long of short of it is that you ride a set route within a predifined time limit and use a Brevet card to record evidence that you have visited a series of controls. What could be better, a bike ride where you collect stickers!?

Langham Dome, a restored WW2 Anti-Aircraft gunner training site

Since then I’ve ridden the Norfolk Special 200, the National 400 and the biggie, London-Edinburgh-London a 1440k ride with a 117 hr limit, that deserves a blog all of its own…

Review: Rapha Brevet Bib-Shorts

 It’s Summer 2015 and I finished the Bontrager 24/12 24hr (now Pivot 24/12) Solo in ninth-place. The second half of the race had been *awful* with constant rain and the resulting mud. I was thrilled to finish, get a top ten and, in my new DHB Aeron Bibs, finally end a long ride without any issues….down there.

Fast forward a year and I’ve got the nod to do the Tour Divide. Amongst the advice I received was “Take two pairs of shorts, of differing brands so if you get a sore spot a change won’t rub in the same place” and “Get some Rapha shorts”.

I’ll admit that as a predominantly off-road rider Rapha didn’t feature heavily on my radar, and also because of how much their products cost. If my DHBs are fine for 24hrs, how can spending 3x their cost be worth it? The same person that told me to buy Rapha also said they’d been put off by the price but the strength of the recommendation was such they relented, I was about to do the same! The Rapha Brevet range had recently been released and promised comfort for the longest rides. As I seemed to be spending a fortune getting to Banff, splashing out on an item I’d wear 18hrs a day for 3 weeks didn’t seem so extravagant.

On the divide I wore the Rapha Brevet shorts from Banff for about 500 miles through Alberta, BC and Montana over the course of a few days, despite the distance, terrain and horrific weather I was still perfectly comfortable. I switched into my trusty DHB shorts and set off from Wise River to Lima, 140 miles away. After 100 miles I was in agony and barely able to remain seated. This severely slowed my pace and I rolled into Lima just as all the resupply options closed, not a boost for morale! I decided to throw caution and hygiene to the wind and put the Brevet shorts back on and see if things improved. To cut a long story short, they did. It was like the previous day’s torture never happened. From there forwards I was converted.

Back into the world of normal reviews I should add that the Rapha Brevet shorts I own are the original version and there is now a revised Mk2 short, I’d hope they were just as good. Rationalising a £180 pair of shorts will be difficult for many, but when you’ve literally spent thousands to get yourself to the Grand Depart It can make sense. If you’re stuck in the middle of the Great Basin in Wyoming having saved money on shorts but not getting to the end would be a false economy. I expect another few days of DHB induced agony and I doubt I’d have made it to Antelope Wells.

The material for the main body of the shorts is incredibly stretchy, they have a difficult to explain way of feeling supportive but not restrictive. The pad is obviously the cornerstone of the comfort and it manages to be comfortable without being excessively thick. It is also perforated to enable quick drying after an overnight wash, something that I did a lot of having consigned my DHBs to Room 101. Design wise they are simple black shorts but the black logos and stripe are retro-reflective. The mesh bib straps don’t cut into your shoulders or interfere with your HRM strap. Despite covering 2500 miles in 3 weeks and being washed in motel sinks (with the free soap!) the shorts are still presentable with no loose seams or excessive pilling.

In summary then, look beyond the gritty monochrome images of suffering on Rapha.cc and treat yourself to a pair. When someone says “How much?” just remember my anecdote from paragraph 3!