I had a few hours to use up this month so put the Cannondale Synapse Neo in the van and parked up at Lanchester. I did not have time the night before to sort out the bike as I was working around my sisters / Angus's houses. I thought it would be a case of of pumping up the tyres and she would be ready to rock n roll. I blew the back tyre up ok and moved to the front, after a while I thought there is no air going in. I fired up the compressor and the tyre would not seat on the rim as I am running them tubeless. After an hour I gave up and fitted a spare tyre and it seated first time. Lesson learnt, don't leave getting the bike ready 5 minutes before you want to leave! Anyway I was on my way and sun was shinning and it was lovely and warm. After I parked up it was straight out of Lanchester and up the massive hill past the garden centre. The cars were flying past me doing 60+mph. Three quarters of the way up the hill I turned off right and onto a much quieter country lane over to Cornasy / Tow Law then down to Wolsingham. Not sure what was going on this morning but everybody was flying in their cars and one idiot in a blue fiesta come past me doing around 70mph plus who just managed to swerve past me in the nick of time as he was about 8ft off the back bumper of a green corsa van who did not indicate or move over much to overtake me. It was that close the draft pulled me towards the middle of the road, very close indeed. I think its time I looked at getting a video camera fitted to the road bike/s.
Once I was down in Wolsingham I turned onto the main road and headed for Frosterley where I took the much quieter back road to Stanhope. From there it was up Crawleyside, its been a while since I have ridden up and it felt much harder and longer than normal! At the top I was going to turn left and head over to Blanchland / Edmudbyers then back up onto the top road but my heart was not in this loop. I would have had a massive headwind on the long climb out of Edmudyers and it had clouded over so I took the top road then turned right for the massive descent all the way to Castleside way. A few more quite back roads and I dropped back into Lanchetser where it was sunny, red hot and no wind!
All in 31.5 miles in 2hrs 11mins with 2800ft of climbing. Below are a few snaps from the loop and a short video clip at the bottom, enjoy and hopefully more soon-
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