Is Britain really getting on its bike and turning into a nation of cyclists?

See what The Independent thinks.

("The picture is somewhat mixed")

I like to end the week on a positive note....

Tom Lehrer, and "We will all go together when we go".

Windsor Castle

Until this evening I have been a lone cyclist, enjoying my own company as I trundle about. But this evening, for the first time, I met up with my brother, and we did a short circuit together from Eton to Dorney along the Jubilee Channel, then back to Eton along the Thames for a quick beer.

The rain threatened, but never arrived, and it was lovely weather for a ride. Riding together made for a very pleasant evening. I will still be enjoying my solitary outings, but I hope I can look forward to ocassional companionship as well.

Round Berkshire

Here is the current state of the round Berkshire route on Open Street Map, now that the additions I made at the weekend have been rendered.

The section around Maidenhead is marked on the map, as it is on the ground, as Sustrans regional route 52, which appears as light blue on the OSM cycle map. The section between Maidenhead and Reading pretty much corresponds to National Cycle Route 4 which is in red as a national cycle route. I have marked the rest as a local route, which appears as dark blue.

I haven't checked every piece of the Maidenhead / Reading stretch yet, although I have marked a slight difference between how the two routes negotiate the centre of Wargrave, and I know there is some work to do where the Round Berkshire Route appears to dive off into Woodley.
The section from Wargrave to Windsor seems fairly complete. I'm pretty confident that I've captured the main outline of the section betwen Newbury and Windsor, though there may be some tweaking to do at a detailed level. The section from Reading to Hungerford and back to Newbury is still to be done. And there are quite large sections away from the Reading / Maidenhead / Windsor area where the route appears to pass through unmapped territory.

The official route map and guide is here.

June round-up

Further progress in June with a new high for the monthly distance at 313 miles. My ride count was about average, at 17 (after 16 and 18 in each of the previous months), but the average ride is now over 18 miles. That includes two more rides above my imperial age, bringing the total to four. My Eddington number is up to 19, and what is more I have already banked 19 journeys of 25 miles, so all 19 will count for a while yet, and pushing it higher isn't going to be a huge challenge.

I completed my Jenkins quest in May, so the more adventurous trips this month have involved following the Round Berkshire route. I've now covered about two-thirds of it. In shorter evening trundles I've managed to fill a few gaps in the coverage of Maidenhead on Open Street Map.

I'm still making slow progress on improving my speed though. The highlight this month has been getting round my favourite ten mile route at an average of 14 mph. But that was two weeks ago, and I'm struggling to better it. At least that leaves plenty of scope for improvement in July.

Tap water

This evening I had another crack at using the GPS to race myself round my Winter Hill loop. Regular visitors will know that I have gradually been bringing down the time it takes me to get round this ten mile route. It's been a couple of weeks since I last tried, and I thought it might have got easier - so I was a bit disappointed at how hard I found it this evening. In the end it took me slightly longer than last time . So further improvement will have to wait for another day.

The odd thing about the journey this evening was that they are preparing to re-surface the road from Winter Hill to Cookham tomorrow, and they have already put out signs setting a speed limit of 10mph. Sod that, I thought to myself, and for a few happy miles I was passing speed restrictions at more than 50% over the limit. It's not every day you get to do that on a bike.

It was a warm evening, and I had worked up quite a glow by the time I got home. Nothing tastes quite as good as a large glass of cool tap water at that point. But a picture of a tap would be just a little bit too boring. So this is a dragon-shaped water pump in the street that I saw on last year's trip to Poland.

Too many variables

This time last year I had just got back home from driving to Poland and back. At the time I had a rather vague objective of getting my weight down. On the way, I took this picture of my dinner, to try and kid myself that I was eating sensibly. I didn't take any pictures of the high-cholesterol travelling food - which I suppose is a kind of denial.

My real aim is to be thinner. I'm not all that concerned about being lighter. So the important test is the notch where I can comfortably buckle my belt. It is still - slowly - moving inwards. However, I also weigh myself fairly regularly - just to make sure that I'm not getting any heavier.

Gradually we are getting to the point of this....

Yesterday I went to the barber and had one of my occassional hair cuts. When I weighed myself this morning I discovered that I was a pound lighter. I knew I was overdue for a haircut, but who would have thought that the barber could have removed a whole pound of the stuff?

My conclusion is that it is much more effective to keep track of how much effort I am putting in, rather than keeping track of the outcomes. It is easy to measure how much further and faster I am riding, and not difficult to set targets that I can reach for, and achieve.

By contrast, my progress on reducing weight and girth seems slow, and patchy, and there are just too many variables. I find one approach encouraging, and the other discouraging. So I will carry on setting all sorts of silly cycling goals, and try to ignore the real objective, in the hope that I achieve it as a side-effect. I also promise to try and avoid unhealthy food - probably.