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It had to be the Avon Gorge Loop again. Anything longer would be too much for Catherine and the kids (not to mention my mum, who I had talked into joining us), and the Family Fiesta is just too boring. Jenny’s now big enough to ride the trailerbike, but not for 30 miles, so the plan was that she would swap between trailer and trailerbike while Charlie stayed in the trailer for the entire ride.
The ride was due to start at 10:30. I wanted to start at about 10:45, to avoid the worst of the crowds, but I thought it would be nice to be there on time so I decided to aim to leave the house by 09:00. As anticipated, we rolled away at 09:30. After two stops for Jenny to swap between trailer and trailerbike, we reached the Millennium Square start at about 10:40. After then stopping for a wee, we just about managed to get away 10 minutes before the start of the Family Fiesta ride.
The first few miles were fairly uneventful. Jenny swapped twice more between the trailer and the trailerbike, having started the ride in the trailer. The bike and trailer drew a number of favourable comments. At one point I was bent over getting something out of a pannier when a woman stopped alongside said to her friend: “That’s nice”. I asked if she was talking about my bottom.
I rode with a sign on the back of my seat bearing the URL www.nohelmetlaw.org.uk. Mum and Catherine later commented that this had attracted a lot of interest, but it was all among people behind me so I hadn’t noticed.
About 15 miles into our ride, as I took the sharp left turn onto the M5 Pill bridge, the bike
slipped out from underneath me. Fortunately such falls tend not to result in injury when the bike
in question is a recumbent with USS, but apparently it looked pretty horrific. Both kids were in the
trailer, but they didn’t seem to notice.
I rode on, but something didn’t feel quite right. It felt like I had a puncture, and sure enough my front tyre was partially deflated, thus explaining my debiking when I tried a sharp turn towing a heavy load. I had enough pressure to ride to the top of the bridge, where I stopped to change the tube. A motorway bridge has to be the least pleasant place I have ever stopped to fix a puncture, with high noise levels from the motor traffic and with the feel of the bridge vibrating every time a lorry went past. Thankfully I had replaced the tyre levers in my pannier with Tacx levers only the previous day, which sped up the tube change quite a bit.
The ride down the other side of the bridge then gave me the justification that I’ve been looking for
to buy a Road Morph pump. I can’t get much above 60psi with my Blackburn, which really wasn’t enough
for controlling the bike downhill with trailer attached (I usually run my Schwalbe Marathons at 100psi).
After the bridge Jenny was again swapped back to the trailerbike, where she remained until we reached
Leigh Woods.
In Pill, the barrier that both bike and trailer had to be lifted over last year was easily avoided thanks to a marshal directing people along the alternative route. As I stopped near her to wait for Mum and Catherine to catch up, I wish I’d thought to shoot a video of her dancing as she directed cycle traffic, and wistfully saying “I want a recumbent” every time a recumbent went past.
We arrived at the Castle Court finish shortly before 14:00, and immediately set up camp under a tree.
Shade was less of an issue this year than usual, though, as we had a fair bit of cloud (which was a good
thing). We were joined about an hour later by Richard, Paul, Sarah, Fred and Pollyanna, who had ridden
the Sustrans ride to Portishead. We had a look round the stalls, Jenny refused to have her face
painted, but Mummy had hers done.
By the time we started to think about leaving at around 16:00, the place was almost deserted. It
turned out that the England football team was playing in a World Cup match, due to kick off at 16:00,
and people had apparently left early to watch it. It made for a peaceful ride home, anyway, apart from
the time when loud cheers heard from across a valley suggested to us that England had just scored.
Jenny started the ride home in the trailer, switching to the trailerbike when we reached the Bristol-Bath cyclepath. She was quite happy there for a couple of miles, until Catherine, in attempting to dismount, managed to drop her bike. The only injury was a small cut on Jenny’s knee, but it gave her a fright and she rode the rest of the way home in the trailer. It was starting to rain by then anyway – a very light, very pleasant rain.
We finally arrived home shortly after 18:00, amidst a barrage of sound informing us that England had probably just won the match. My computer showed a total distance of 30.94 miles.
Danny
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