Critical Mass

First ride since it was ruled legal in the high court. Six Moultons counted.

Waterloo Bridge

Grosvenor Square (by the US Embassy)

The Mall.

I swear I have not idea how this silly camera phone decides what size of picture to take!

World Cup

Riding back from work before the Trinidad and Tobago vs England match, I saw that the Sun and News of the World had hired a little plane to fly a

HUGE

banner around. Such a shame the Moto takes tiny silly pictures, still, you get the idea. 'Come on England', it said, except they didn't, the performance was atrocious.

Round-up

It's been a while.

I went on a bike ride earlier this month. Around the Green Chain. Here's the route.

Green Chain

From Catford, Russ led us down to Grove Park, where I found the first Green Chain sign. The route is mostly signed, but because there are at least two routes, we got lost at Mottingham. Still, there were some great views. Here on King John walk, you could view all of London from Canary Wharf to the City to St. Pauls. Of course the rubbish camera on the Moto barely captured it.

And from Elmstead Woods (a proper ancient wood) a nice view down a hill.

We ended up at the Thames Barrier, see me, fatty and Russ:

From there, we rode back to Catford, along the river, back to Greenwich then down Route 21. About 30 miles in total.

Blast around Kent

Perhaps blast is the wrong word. I went on a lovely bike ride today around the country lanes of Kent, from Wye to Chilern and really pretty village:

I was cycling with my mate Gethin who lives a few streets away from me. His bike is the one in front. A couple came up to me as we were enjoying a cream tea in a teashop in Chilern, to ask me about the bike. The man said he was interested in the spindly design and the woman said she was interested in the short wheel base.

Look, it's a space frame, not spindles, and if you look carefully at the picture above you can see that the 'wheelbase' (the distance between the centre of the wheel), is almost identical between the bikes. So there.

Anyway I got 32 miles before getting a puncture. WHAT?

Still, couldn't have happened in nicer place, eh? I wasn't expecting a puncture, on my puncture proof tyres, so I didn't have a kit. We were only a few miles from Geth's car (at the end of the ride) so he just rode to the end, drove back and rescued me. Cheers Geth!

I got home and checked the tube. Phew, not a puncture after all! The road was bumpy in that section and it must have damaged the repair patch from the last puncture on the tube from the knobbly tyres. So the Marathon Pluses are not at fault. Mental calmness restored.

I now need to talk to my bike dealer about my next service. It's going to involve this and this, something like this and probably this.