I’ve been going on the Reading CTC Wednesday night rides for the last few weeks. Evening riding gives you a different perspective, it’s normally quieter for a start, and as it gets dark the routes you know from riding in the daylight look very different. Riding in a group of up to 20 riders also makes negotiating traffic easier

Last Wednesday was a bit of a long one though. I knew the end point of the ride (The Bell in Aldworth) was quite a long way away, and high up, but the route we took there (admittedly on the ‘long off road ride’), was quite indirect! Not complaining though as it was a good ride, though 72Km before bedtime was pushing the limits.

The blue dots on this map show where we went. The smell of fast food on my way back through Reading has rarely been more appealing

It might be unsuitable for oil burning motors – but not for my cheese and tomato butty powered bike !

Would have been nicer without the wind mind. And these cows, who had cunningly got through a fence and straddled the bridleway over “wansdyke”. I had to scare them out of the way with my best cow scaring noise. The noise I make when falling off my bike seemed to work

Here is the fugawi and text versions of the route – wilts20.zip – number 20 from the “Mountain Bike Guide to Wiltshire” book, but without the road section through Avebury.

No kamikaze squirrels this week – probably too hot for them. Here is where I went – sonningrothersonning.zip.

Fairly uneventful – didn’t fall off or get lost or anything :O

More biking – lots of whizzing through woods. Very close to running over kamikaze squirrels who seem to think it fun to run in front of you when you’re going downhill at about 30kph.

See where to go – sonningrotherfield.zip

Another weekend another bike ride.

My better half punctured, no problem says I, and get a spare inner tube from my bag. However, when it comes to fitting it discover that better halfs new mountain bike has presta valves, so my spare tube won’t fit! Also, my pump won’t let us pump up the patched tube. Note to self, do a better spares check when leaving. Fortunately a passing cyclist had the required technology to inflate the tube.

Also managed to convince my self that I had lost my new phone. Phoned Orange to tell them, so as to make sure someone doesn’t discover it and phone China. Cycle back to where I think I left it. No phone. So go home in a mood. Get home, empty bag, discover phone in the bladder pocket of my Camelbak Phone Orange again with the good news, wait 24 hours for it to be turned on again!

The pic is at “Chazey Wood”, if it entices you to want to try the ride then some new technology at Looseend.org headquarters will help. This zip file – sonningcaversahm.zip contains a Fugawi track for the route, and a textual version too that might be usable with other mapping software