Jet Lag, 200 km and Coffee
“miss a month and you have to start all over again.”
Can you get jet lag from driving back from Scotland? Heavy rain through the Lake District made a stop at Teebay Services unappealing and I had driven on, making only short stops. I felt tired for several days and after a few weeks of shorter rides the prospect of a 200 km ride was not immediately attractive. But “miss a month and you have to start all over again”. I was not going to jeopardise my chances of completing my fourth RRtY early in 2023.
On the bright side the weather forecast for Tuesday 13 September was fairly good: only a small chance of light showers after 11 am. I packed my Gore-Tex rain jacket but not my overshoes: after all, the forecast was for light showers at worst.
I’d ridden and enjoyed this route, through Reading and Hermitage to The Pantry cafe at Yattendon and back via Tidmarsh into Reading for the return leg to West London. Some Audaxers pride themselves on choosing new routes for each of their DIYs; I find that being able to visualise my progress on a ride I have done before adds to my confidence that I can - almost certainly - complete it successfully. You will be able to see - and download - this route at the bottom of this page.
As I approached Twyford from Dinton Pastures and Beggars Hill Road, there was an unaccustomed chill in the air with grey clouds massing. I stopped at the Texaco Co op by the A4 to buy a bottle of water. As I refilled my bidons the first heavy drops of rain fell through a gap in the filling station canopy on to my saddle: time to ride. The showers continued, mostly light fading to a welcome drizzle. I always carry energy bars from 33Fuel and for this ride I’d packed a small tub of porridge with honey and some smoked salmon sandwiches. But where to stop? Audax hotels, aka bus shelters, seemed absent until I reached Hermitage where I made a short stop for lunch.
Time to press on. I was aiming for The Pantry cafe at Yattendon and knew that the kitchen closed at 2.30 pm although as I only wanted coffee and cake there was probably some leeway.
I knew that this ride was fairly flat with only about 1450 m climbing in 200 km. My Garmin Edge 1030 Plus showed five climbs. As I began ascent five, along Marlston Road from Holy Trinity Church at Hermitage, I was only too aware that there was a very short sharp climb somewhere near Tidmarsh, between the cafe and Reading. I could not quite visualise exactly where but my legs knew.
A rolling road past the Pot Kiln pub took me up (literally) to Yattendon where a right turn along Bryants Lane brought me out to The Pantry. With the outside seating folded up against the tables in the rain I parked my bike against a sage bush and went inside and asked for an Americano in a smallish cup because I don’t like weak coffee. “It’s so hard to choose .. but I will have a pecan blondie, please”. I took this a window seat and one of the very helpful young women brought me my coffee in a real cup: no disposables, thank you.
Coffee and cake at The Pantry, Yattendon
As I left, I thanked them and remarked that the coffee and cake stop was the highlight of my ride. When they heard that I had ridden from London and was returning, the chef ventured from the kitchen and declared me a hero, remarking that he wouldn’t be able to ride out of his gate. I think he may have sampled a few of his excellent cakes.
About 1.5 km after leaving Yattendon, I turned right onto Scratchface Lane; this led to Dark Lane where I began the first of two quite short but sharp climbs with a maximum gradient of about 14%. I made a mental note to find out why Garmin’s ClimbPro did not alert me to these. More on this in another blog post.
As I left Twyford the rain started to fall much more heavily, so much so that the Garmin interpreted some rain drops as requests to stop the route or to change data fields. At one point the map changed scale to show the north of France as well as the south of England. Fortunately it swapped from data to mapping to alert me to the one turn that I was unsure about. I’ve since changed the screen touch sensitivity for the autumn and winter months. If you are a Garmin user, please note that you can have different settings for each activity profile.
Back in Windsor I recalled David Millar commentating on the Tour de France. He remarked that when he was on a training ride with only 40 km (I think) to go, he was almost home. By this stage a few drops of rain had found their way between my socks and my shoes. Fortunately they were not too wet and they “air dried” in a couple of days. Ready for my next 200 km, I have two more to complete this month.
As shown, this route is just under 200 km. Please feel free to adapt the start or finish to make it 200.
