A Rather Nice Trial Run

So I had to take a couple of days holiday I had left over from last year, and seeing as how it seems as though we've been doing nothing but cycling for the last four months in preparation for our cycle trip, we thought it would be good idea (and rather nice) to pick somewhere nice and cycle there.

We're up to around 50 mile rides now, which puts us in range of a surprising amount of southern England. Bath was a bit out of our reach, so we headed just south of there to Salisbury (near Stonehenge). We were only going for one night to get a couple of good days riding in back to back to see how we managed.

I had also just ordered an Extra Wheel trailer for pulling all of our crap behind us rather than loading up our bikes, so I wanted to test that out too.

The other thing we wanted to test out was perhaps the most important and could be broken into two parts:

a) how would we get on with route-finding while using minor roads in a country that has a habit of both changing the name every km, and not using any signage to indicate what road you are on.

b) would we still be friends by the end of it?

I'll be the first to admit that when I can't figure out where I'm going, which I conveniently write off to unnecessarily poor signage, I get a little frustrated. In the car this has been alleviated by procuring a sat-nav. It may prove prudent to acquire one for the bike.

Now we figured, based on our normal long rides taking us less than four hours, we would give ourselves five to get to Salisbury. So we'd leave at around noon, which gave us time to watch the Chinese Grand Prix (what a great season this year is shaping up to be). We packed our bags, hooked up the trailer to my bike, and set off.

I've never pulled anything behind my bike before, so I didn't have any idea what it would be like. The idea of this trailer is that the load is carried by the wheel, and is not suspended between the trailer and the bike. So on flat ground you barely notice the weight. What you do feel, with any decent load, is the weight shift laterally, so a smooth circular pedal stroke becomes far more important. The other thing I immediately noticed is that you cannot stand up to put the hammer down on steep climbs. The bike is all over the place if you do as the side to side motion of standing is massively exaggerated. This is made all the worse as our bikes weight next to nothing to begin with, so the extra weight becomes that much more apparent.

Then there's the climbs. While the trailer disappears on the flats, you are still pulling, in my case over the last two days, another 33 pounds uphill. It doesn't take much of an incline either, to notice the weight. While this will just make me stronger, it was a real struggle by the end of the day. I'll tell you this much, after 40 miles, another 10 or so of hill after hill just about killed me.

All in all, the trailer is brilliant. We'll be doing a lot more touring in the future, so it's definitely a great buy for us. The downside is that so far Myra has no idea how much the extra weight makes a difference so me carrying one more thing isn't a big deal for her! That'll be right sorted out when I stick the trailer on her bike for a ride or two.

THE RIDE
We set out on an impossibly gorgeous day, at about 1pm. For those of you who like to look at maps, copy this: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&vps=1&jsv=154c&msa=0&output=nl&msid=113065585354518911328.000467b1717d40857aec9 and go to google maps and paste it into the "search maps" field.

We didn't start off well. We got maybe ten miles out, and spent maybe half an hour going back and forth looking for the right roads to take. iPhone saved the day. I had printed off directions from google maps, but as the signage for the main roads only tells you one or two main towns that a particular road leads to, and not necessarily what that road is called, the directions and the actual roads don't always match. The maps function on the iPhone tells you where you are currently, and allows you to see where you need to go. Thus, we are seriously considering getting a little nav device for our bikes. Maps are great an all, but they don't tell you when you've missed a turn and you still have to figure out where you are. Plus, we'd need maybe 30-40 separate maps for our trip, which would cost the same and we couldn't carry all that anyway.

So pretty early on, we made a left turn off of a main road (bear in mind that we didn't need to cross any traffic, being the UK) and pulled to the side to double check that we were on the right course. No sudden stops, middle of the day, one lane of traffic. Pretty straight forward. We had that typical guy in a car who thinks bikes on roads are a nuisance make the same turn, honk at us as he went by and mouthed something, likely something clever, then stop about 30 yards ahead, roll down his window and yell at us for not looking behind us before we stopped, called us a naughty name and then sped off. Real tough.

Anyway, once we were on our way, we got into some fantastic countryside. Everything here is in full bloom, so the rolling hillsides are a mix of lush green and vibrant yellow crops. We tried to stick to minor roads and lanes as much as possible, so many had trees arching over from both sides, and most of the traffic were horses (we did leave on a Sunday).

We passed one gorgeous property after another, a few rather large stately homes, a bunch of super fuzzy sheep (and a bunch of amazingly fuzzy black ones), a field that had hundreds of chickens and roosters in it, and between Whitchurch and Stockbridge, every town was like something you'd see on a Jane Austin movie - really old, really nice, and everything had a thatched roof.
A few miles from Salisbury we were ready to call it quits, the hills and trailer combo having taken everything out of me and Myra had a few cramping muscles, but we were rewarded with a nice decent into Salisbury (before one last steep hill just to be sure) and got a view of what made me choose Salisbury. The cathedral there is one of the largest overall and the tallest in Briton, and was build 750 years ago. I saw the spire from a distance coming into Salisbury and thought it looked a bit disappointing, but when you get anywhere near it, the scale of this place is breathtaking. Our B&B was right across the street from it, and the cathedral spire towers over everything else in the town.

Cathedral View B&B was our home for the night, and I highly recommend it if you are ever in Salisbury. Wende and Steve were brilliant hosts. Steve is a walking history book so he filled us in on quite a bit when we arrived, about the town, the cathedral, and the surrounding area. The house was quite nice. We ditched our stuff, had a shower, and headed out for dinner, then walked over to have a gander at the old cathedral at night. The north face is under scaffolding, unfortunately, as it's about 20 years into a 30 year (or so) restoration programme. Even so, it's all lit up at night, and the organ was going full tilt, so it was almost a bit surreal. In the morning, after a really nice full english breakfast prepared by Steve, we had a look at it in the daylight, which is a completely different experience. We also got a chance to see the interior.





Absolutely stunning. The scale of these large cathedrals is enough to impress, but the detail in the stonework, woodwork and the stain glass are amazing. It also houses Europe's oldest working clock (1386). Myra thought it topped Notre Dame, and I can't disagree.

Back at the B&B, we tenderly mounted our bikes again, to see what a second day in the saddle felt like, and we had a couple of steep hills ready and waiting, keen to test our resolve. We started out pretty tired, but when we got going we actually felt alright. On average, the way back is more uphill, and we had a bit of a head wind, so we didn't have the pace that we did on the way out, but we got there in the end. We stopped for lunch, which, in hindsight, made things worse. The sitting around and eating a full meal made for a difficult restart, so next time we'll have a good breakfast, snack throughout the day, and have a good dinner when we arrive. We ended up taking a slightly different route than on the way out, but made better time (excluding lunch) as we only went off course a couple of times.

It was great to get away for a couple of days and see a bit of Salisbury. I don't think I could have waited until July to have a break from work. Just as importantly, though, we feel like we could do another days cycling today, so we're feeling pretty good about our ability to do this. What we're a bit concerned about it that many of our days are in excess of 80 miles, and include an unknown quantity of hills. The trailer is sure to be a bit heavier, so I'm going to need to focus a bit more on my strength as well as endurance. My knee also alerted me of it's presence a couple of times, and it's those things that could put the trip to a grinding halt, so fingers crossed our joints stay healthy and strong!

We're going to do one or two more of these little excursions before we go to get a little more used to the whole process. As usual, stay tuned for the next installment of the adventures of... whatever you want to call this.