Sunday morning Durham Villages local road ride & Creo Di2 update & Walking routes around Shincliffe area

 

Lets do a catch up first - after picking up my road Creo on Wednesday I had a look around on the net for a new battery and got the shock of my life on the rrp, its now £159.99, that's just plain crazy but Shimano has you by the short n curlies as they say. There is stock in the uk so shopped around and as you can imagine there is not a lot of discount on these. Wiggle had 12% off so I checked stock at Infinity Cycles / Specialized and they had one in. Specialized have their price match on so Peter sorted me out again and picked it up on Friday and paid £140. I plugged the cable in to the new battery and then plugged in the charger, nothing happened! checked the gears and nothing working. After a few more unplugs and re plugs of the charger the charging light finally came on and it started charging up. I checked the battery status once the light had gone out on the charger and it was solid green so it had held its charge. Checked the gears and they were working, checked again in a few hours and still working. Checked again this morning and still working so took it out for a spin. 

Todays route was one which I have done for years and was ideal as it does not venture too far away from home so if I had any more problems with the Di2 it is not too far to be collected. It was overcast and cloudy when I set off with the Garmin reading 11.9 degrees and it was spitting rain. Further into the route the rain dried up and the temperature was rising making it much more pleasant ride as I had my short sleeved jersey and shorts on. Pleased I had my gilet on to keep the cold wind off my chest on the descents. As usual on this loop the roads are always very quiet early on a Sunday morning. The only downside I had to stop at every single set of traffic lights as they were all on red! Only one close pass which is not bad going these days. Once back home the sun came out and temperature shot up. There is a map of the route at the bottom of this blog, all in 31.5 miles in 2 hrs 1 min with 1800ft of climbing. Enjoy and hopefully more soon- 

When I stopped at High Shincliffe to take a photo there was some maps in the holder on the board sign. It has been a while since we have had a good walk around this area, we need to get back around again but if you live local see below for a few ideas.