Early Saturday morning local road ride - Durham Villages loop

Well its has hardly stopped raining since we got back from our holidays and I have never stopped working / doing jobs etc since we have got back. Late yesterday afternoon todays forecast changed so I got the lights charged up and fitted, pumped the tyres up and the bike was ready for an early morning ride. I was up and out by 6am and it was rather warm. As daylight started to come through the temperature started to drop and the wind picked up. The roads were soaking and loads of massive puddles every where. I did my local road ride - Durham villages, 32 miles 2 hours 1 minute with nearly 2000ft of climbing. I also had a head wind all the way back in just to finish me off. Below are a few snaps and a short video clip from the ride, enjoy and hopefully more soon -

 

 

 

And after that rather wet / spray ride I am going to wash the bike and fit some full length mudguards as the forecast is looking rather damp again for the next two weeks.

 

Break away in the Lakes and some Fresh Goodies

Well what a break away that has been in the Lake District. If you have followed my blog over the years we don't tend to hit on good weather to say the least. We packed full waterproofs / Goretex to cover us from head to toe but it never rained once the whole time we were away. In fact we had a very hard frost every night and glorious sunshine most days. The views whilst travelling around the area was unreal with all the autumn colours. Arran has took some cracking photos on his phone which I will add later but below are a few snaps from my camera. The lakes was very busy with traffic and loads of people milling around enjoying the fantastic weather. We had days out to Keswick, Ambleside, Penrith and called in past Ings (Biketreks), no Wheelbase this time, ran out of time that day. On our last day we normally head over the tops to Alston but this time we headed North up the M6 and called in past Chapman Bags at Carlisle to there factory for a new bag before continuing north on the M6 to Gretna Green for the outlet village shopping centre. Then it was back down the M6 to Houghton garden centre for dinner and Brokbushes outside Corbridge was our last stop. Enjoy the snaps and hopefully more to come soon -

 

 

And below are a few of the goodies we bought whilst away and that have landed over the last week. More on these over the coming months in Fresh Goods Sunday.