End on September already

Some photos from Glorious Glamorgan 100km Audax 

Dilema ! 

A friend 

The board walk, a bit slippery ! 

The park weir

Rough tracks 

Glamorous assistant with tea 

Glamorous assistant again with our friends 

 Monday October 2nd 

What a busy week starting off with two days of dog sitting for my son, Bramble, Scrumpy and Little Bracken were very excited to see us and greeted us with lots of energy 

But we’re wonderfully well behaved over the two days. Helped by a field session, with Bracken doing six mad laps of the field, Scrumpy helping himself to pears and apples, and old Bramble wondering round at a slow pace. A lovely two days 😊

Boiler serviced, that I forgot about, good job he phoned before he came ! 

Thursday a phone call from the dentist telling us our 8.45 appointment was cancelled as dentist of sick! This is the third cancelled appointment, then they have the cheek to send an email telling us we need to join their membership scheme! At a monthly premium 😡 at least the rest of the day went well with a lovely visit to Watchet to Somerset Art week, meeting up with friends for lunch ( which is another whole new story!! ) it gave us chance to give the van a run out, the weather was lovely, some of the art on show was not quite to my taste, preferring landscape watercolours. 

I managed 2 runs this week 3.79 miles at 10:57 min mile down my sea front run and a nice off road path run to Berrow church and back 3:08 miles at 11:15 min mile. I felt ok on both, leg still numb but apart from a slight irritation it was ok, I made sure that I stretched at the end 😊 

My final acupuncture appointment for Friday was cancelled, telling me she has covid! So rebooked but! Not till November.

Saturday was the highlight of the week, a 100km Audax cycle ride over in Glamorgan with my cycling 🚴‍♀️ buddy LisaBH. An 8 am start in Cardiff meant an early start from Burnham 6:15. Bikes were put in the van rather than the rack, as it was easier on the dark Saturday morning. 

The M5 was quite busy but the sat nav guided us easily to the middle of Cardiff and! Easy parking,with half an hour to spare to sort ourselves out and  picked our Brevit cards, a very brief, briefing from the organiser E.g. “ok see you all later” 

Getting out of the complex of shops etc and onto the path proved to be a challenge, particularly as we opted to follow a couple of cyclists, who we thought knew where they were going!! We were wrong so lost after the first 1/2 km 😊 I should have known better! We finally picked up the taff trail along the river and through a Park, before joining the back streets of Cardiff and getting lost when our sat navs kept telling us to do a Uturn, which we did several times, and after resetting the sat nav route getting the same, so it was paper instructions time, which showed we were in fact on the right route, and we finally exited Cardiff at St Fagan Museum and out into the rolling hills of Glamorgan, hills not steep but quite frequent and upwards of 1-2 km long ! After the heavy traffic of the city the quiet narrow lanes were a pleasure with views over the Bristol Channel towards Home and Exmoor, even though it was a little misty. It had been a chilly start and it was very dull and overcast, which seemed to be set in for  the day. 

After ups lead by Lisa and the downs lead by me, overtaking a large well organised cycle club group we finally made it after about 30 km to the Velo cafe at Llanwit Major, a pretty Welsh village , the cafe at the centre next to a bakery! So it was two teas from the cafe and a lovely large hot  cheese and onion pasty for me and corned beef pasty for Lisa from the bakery next door. Timed it just right as a very large group of cyclist arrived just as we were tucking into our snacks and tea. I couldn’t eat all my pasty as it was large and very hot , but very nice, so wrapped it up and put in my pocked for later

Back to the hills and narrow lanes before we hit the roads around Bridgend and Pencoed, which were very busy ! And the route took us a few km on main roads through a very run down industrial area, before exiting on to a narrow rough lane and a very deep Ford which Lisa was about to ride through before I pointed out stepping stones and the fact that the depth was more than half her wheel! After a very dodgy stepping stone crossing with road cleats we were able continue, be it up a very steep rough surface hill. 

More rough lanes past dodgy looking parked up BMW and Lisa swearing and cursing the muddy, dangling brambles and leaf covered track, we were pleased to get back on the road.

Another pretty part of the ride to Parc slip wildlife cafe at 70 km with reminders of the mining industry and the disaster in the past where a number of miners were killed nice cycling along the track before back to the roads and the return to Cardiff, a few more stiff hills, one caught me out because of my gears jumping, meant I had my first hill walk of the ride. We were soon back negotiating the Cardiff traffic and a by now very busy park full of rugby, football, dog walkers and half the population of Cardiff 😊 at last arrivee and brevit card stamped 64 miles and 4131ft climbed, not the best cycling route, info controls were missed as we couldn’t find them, errors in the GPS instructions , busy traffic and a dull overcast day, but the company on the day made up for it, lisa was a great cycling buddy, glad she was able to put up with me for the day. 

Sunday was a nice relaxing day with some lawn mowing of very long grass lawns, on a very muggy warm day.