francoisbob

from the north of the Moors, through the national Park, then through York (nice), and then on the rush towards Doncaster to reach Bawtry rather late at night…
My night in the north of the moors having been pretty cold, I didn’t get to sleep much, so in the morning I put more clothes on and get a few extra hours sleep, so that I eventually left my field at about 11am… I then climbed onto the Moors hills (north Yorkshire national park), good hills, good landscape. On the way down passing Helmsley I came across signs indicating a “cycle event” so I check, it was the “Grand Prix of Ryedale” having the finish in a massive park, but 2 hours later, so I made my way towards York, getting to see the race on the way! At the feeding point, I requested to get a bottle too, as my effort deserve on of those fancy “protein recovery” bottle, they first refused to give me one, being offended I shouted some more or less friendly words telling about my disappointment, up to a loud “Yir all a bunch of stingy bastards!” and just before the end a friendly old man gave me one! Woohoo! Success!
After that I came down to visit the nice city of York, did a bit the “tourist”, had a rest in a nice park, went to some cafés and pub to find a wifi connection to find out that my next host planned for the day after couldn’t anymore, but could host me the same day ! (a few hours later!) I checked the distance (about 60km) said OK, its rideable! Let’s go! Jumped on my bike, snapped the Clifford tower on the way on rushed the 60 km at a rather high speed average, head in the handlebar. After a sign “Bawtry 18” I accelerated, soon seing a sign “Bawtry 9”, making me believe it was so close, but actually I saw an other (the same Bawtry 9 something like 3-5 miles away! Further away, according to my bike computer I knew that I wasn’t far anymore (it was about 9pm, and I already covered 145km during the day) I thought “right, I’m almost there, nothing can stop me now, except a puncture” and guess what happened….? My first puncture over more than 2000km with this old cracked rear tyre… my tools and spare parts being deep inside the rear pannier (on purpose), I tried to fix the puncture with a patch, packed up during the drying time; it didn’t work. Pissed off, I grabbed my spare tube and spare tyre, fitted them and rushed as fast as possible the last 4 miles almost by night…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 3:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.