On Sunday 2nd September I cycled from Wellingborough to Oxford.
I’ve made this journey back in 2015 when I visited Giles Gear for his Birthday. Back then I used some country roads getting out of Northampton and then hit the A43. I know, from experience, that if I were to take the whole left lane, as I correctly should do, there would be trouble. The vast majority of drivers do not use their eyes correctly and rather than driving appropriately would speed up my rear and honk and act all confused as if there wasn’t a lane to their right to overtake. Therefore, historically I have cycled just to the left of the white lane leaving the two lanes completely free for drivers and I’ve been in the tiny gap that is often filled with broken car parks, grit and other debris.
This time I planned a route on my PC using the Garmin maps. I clicked on the map where I would start and where I hoped to end and it made a route. I saw that it mainly tried to take me on the A43 so I clicked around and adjusted this. I then then sent this to my device and crossed my fingers.
I set my Garmin to go and through its rudimentary map – a triangle on a line which curves in the direction I should go, I followed it for the full 57 miles and eventually I was there. Generally, I was quite happy with the route. There were a couple of issues including being led through a farmers’ field and being taken along a public footpath which was actually gated off.
With it being Sunday, traffic was lower than usual. The partially computer generated route put me on quite a few nice roads which were popular with cyclists. I travelled along a road and passed six other bicycles. Yes, I can confirm I did overtake all of these people. Do not pay close attention to my statistics for the ride. Walking through the farmers’ field and being led along the non-existent public footpath skewed my results slightly.
It was a hot ride. Hot in both senses of the word. Hot as in “that was hot” and hot as in, oww, it’s too hot. As August drew to a close, there were quite a few cold days and I fully expected autumn to soon be around the corner. It was lovely however to see the start of September like this.
Speak soon,
Samuel
