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| First HSLCC For James! |
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| Just 15 miles to go! |
Being on holiday I was able to arrange a week day early bird ride. the aim was to try out a new 50 mile route obtained from someone on Strava (cant remember who) called the 'Scotney Castle Hilltastic'. This would be excellent preparation for the 'Hell Of Ashdown' on Sunday as its hill density of 87 (feet per mile) is only a little lower than Ahdown's 95. Riding with us for the first time was James Cornford. James had reached a high standard of BMX riding and had only relatively recently switched to road riding. From his emails he seemed a little apprehensive about riding with us but being a young slim man on a shiny carbon bike surrounded by a clutch of mamils, I didn't think he would need to worry. As Colin exclaimed, '' good job you like his bike as you are going to be seeing a lot of the back of it"! We waited a good ten minutes for Nigel who had emailed me to say he was coming but couldn't delay any longer so set off west towards battle without him. This was my first ride with a new stiffer (mavic aksium) back wheel and some brand new carbon shoes. Unusually for me I hadn't fully tested them before the ride, just set them up and hoped for the best. Straight away I felt a big improvement at the back end of my cheapo alloy Giant Defy, no longer was the back end bouncing around as though I had a puncture.It wasn't super stiff but the remaining springiness was probably a good idea to give me a comfortable ride. The carbon shoes felt made to measure and provided a superb platform for pushing down onto. With these improvements I definitely felt myself riding one or two mph faster up hill. For once, I wasn't the back marker, this joy was left to Steve D who was little slower than me all day. On ascending Netherfield hill my mobile went off and I checked to find a text from Nigel who was in hot pursuit of us, being able to follow the route on his Garmin.This being a new route, once or twice I misinterpreted the line on my garmin and we had to double back for a missed turn, Colin gets annoyed by these errors and reckons I should get an edge 800 with full mapping but I am a big fan of the more basic bread crumb trail and see missing the occasional turn as part of the fun. However, when we got near Scotney castle the Garmin seemed to be directing us down the dual carriage way. This couldn't be right, so we went this way and that way and couldn't seem to get on the correct route. While faffing around, there was a shout and the familiar figure of Nigel appeared, after 22 miles he had finally caught up with us.
Nigel also had the route on his garmin, so myself and Nigel tried to sort out which way we should go. Eventually we found out that the route was actually down an access route into the castle itself! By now the others had decided to head up the main road to lamberhurst and Goudhurst so we abandoned our little historical excursion and joined them for what turned out to be a very fast and surprisingly enjoyable diversion along the A22 to Goudhurst. The rest of the route was on some of my favourite Kent roads through places such as Hartley and Sandhusrst before arriving at the familiar village of Staplehurst. Here my Garmin finally ran out of juice but we had all decided to head the direct route to our various homes , as most of us were feeling the 4,000 feet of ascent in our legs. Myself, Steve B and Nigel headed to Westfield for a nice cut of tea at Steve's lovely cottage that he finished renovating last year. I really enjoyed this new route and was overjoyed with my new carbon shoes, no nerve pain even after 55 miles, brilliant!
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