Oh how Richard wishes this had been a quote from an Adam West Batman episode! The truth is probably far more rediculous, and certainly raised a few laughs (ending in a toilet stop!), but more of that later.
Wednesday came around, and by some miracle found Richard and Joules both having a day off, and the weather looking half decent. A ride was in the offing!
It started as the reverse of Sunday's ride - out to Hayle, through, although this time along St George's Walk, and then out to Gwithian, up onto the North Cliffs, and this time DOWN HILL into Portreath. Not that it was that much quicker as the sharp corner at the bottom with the road lightly dusted with sand meant you have to hang on to the brakes all the way down.
We then broke from sunday's route by heading up over the hill to Porthtowan. We stopped above Porthtowan for a banana and drink stop - have we mentioned before, bananas are rocket fuel for cyclists! So there was this hedge there with a play area the other side, so Richard didn't want to throw the banana skin over, but into the ditch... only it caught on the bramble and stuck, in FULL view. Joules laughed.
For some reason Joules had been suggesting breaking off from the route through Porthtowan for a few miles. Having never been that way, Richard was not sure why...
Heading out of Porthtowan to the North there is a hill. It is STEEP.
One amazing thing happened though. The weather was bright and clear, sun on our shoulders, and to the left was Porthtowan bay as we climbed the hill, with the most amazing waves building to walls of water at least ten feet high and breaking perfectly as they came in. We were captivated by the sight of these waves crashing in one after the other to such an extent that we didn't realise we had almost reached the top of the hill! Maybe Douglas Adams was on to something when he said that if the distraction is great enough, gravity forgets about you for a few seconds!
From there we headed up to St Agnes, we were offered a race by a couple of horse riders, but declined. Tandems may be fast on the flat and down hill, but up hill they can be pretty slow...
We stopped for a cup of tea/coffee in St Agnes. The tea was good, the coffee was average and the scones were burnt. Needless to say we won't be stopping there again no matter how good the proprietor's collection of tea cups is.
While we stopped for our break we heard on the radio in the cafe about a rather bad crash that had closed the A30 near Hayle. This had quite a bearing on our choice of route home so as to avoid the detour. We headed back to Black Water, then Scorrier and into Redruth. By this time it was raining.
We were both wearing water proof tops, so no problems there but the experience has shown that we need some water proof covering for our legs. This may be the time to invest in Rain Legs - sort of waterproof chaps.
Riding through Scorrier, within the space of five minutes three cars undertook us on roundabouts and several vehicles came so close overtaking us we could have had conversations with their occupants. WHY? Give us some room please!
We decided it probably wasn't a good idea to carry on through Pool and Camborne with the diversions off the A30, so we picked up part of Sunday's route again and headed up the hill out of Redruth to Four Lanes and then on to Troon. We had our last Banana stop here.
So, we had set off with four bananas. Two skins had not quite reached hidden positions, the one from the Redruth stop was still with us as there was no where to dispose of it where we stopped. So Richard threw the first one over his shoulder, the thinking being he couldn't do any worse... WRONG - right on the hedge in full view. Cue laughter. As this was our last break, there was another banana skin. Thinking it couldn't be worse Richard decided to throw it over his shoulder again... Watching the reflection in Joules' glasses he thought it was flying quite well... It wasn't. Banana skins don't fly well... It landed in a tree about ten feet up. In perfect view. Richard needed a wee...
While riding up the hill to Four Lanes, Joules had received a call on her mobile from number 2 son asking if we could pick up some samples for a project from the local farm suppliers. Only a slight detour for us, so we headed down the hill from Troon into Praze am Beeble, then off to Carnhell Green to Gwinear Farmers to collect the samples and data sheets. While there Joules' Dad turned up. He was impressed with what we had done so far.
From there it was only five miles home, and we were grateful for that. After a stop of any length it can take a couple of minutes for the legs to start turning properly again. Lesson learnt - keep the breaks short and stop somewhere warm.
So, Richard had not looked at the distance all the way so it really was guess time. Joules hoped fifty miles, but we both suspected not. In fact we had covered 45 miles in 4 hours and 9 minutes, and average of 10.8 miles per hour.
We are both delighted with this!
More to come yet, so stay tuned!
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