I’ve avoided going east from home until now for two reasons, I would have to repeat some of my commuting route and it’s hard to avoid busy B and A-roads. But this Saturday for a change I decided for variation to head east.

I’m not very good at planning for the wind as a strong and blustery SW wind was blowing as I headed NE to start the route on to the A417 at Culham (you’ll see why this was a bad move in a minute!). There is a cyclepath alongside the fast, busy A-road which I used. This is …

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Cycling to and from work on my now regular 17 mile route via Appleford, Long Wittenham, Little Wittenham, Sires Hill, North Moreton, South Moreton and Cholsey. I can do this route without having to think too hard and it takes in a couple of moderate hills, one up to Wittenham Clumps and Cholsey Hill. There is another short steep hill in North Moreton.

Also got to test my new front light which is like having a headlight, made such a difference to cycling on the unlit country roads. It was a thoroughly miserable day though, the morning ride was overcast …

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In my never ending quest for variation in routes I stole another route from the Wantage CTC. They rode this almost exact route on 1st November as their ‘moderate’ ride. I was interested to see whether I would keep pace with what they manage. They averaged 13.3 mph on the route, I did 15.02 mph which was faster than I expected. I wasn’t keeping track as I cycled as I wanted to see what it would be and I wasn’t especially pushing hard.

The route started in Sutton Courtenay and went via Milton and under the A34 and up Milton …

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The main distinction of this ride to work on a grey November day was that my front light is rubbish. I couldn’t see a thing on the way home as this was the first commuting ride since the clocks went back. I still did the full 17 mile route, but boy it was dark on the country roads! The picture isn’t my light, I have been using an old battery light, this is my new light! Normally £300 the nice man in …

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After recent hilly rides I picked a very flat route for this Saturday ride. But this was wind-training rather than hill-training as there was a bitter and strong NE wind blowing. It was grey and drizzly as I cycled from home via Drayton to the Hanneys. The Hanney Road was extensively covered in mud from tractors, which was slippery in the damp conditions, and with the crosswind it wasn’t the most pleasant stretch. From West Hanney I turned north into the wind and cycled via Lyford and Charney Bassett to join the B4508. This is a very quiet B-road, I …

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I bought a new telescope a couple of weeks ago (that makes a total of six that I own) and it’s a beautiful piece of work. It’s a William Optics Megrez 72FD and is the best engineered telescope I have used, solid and strong. The focuser is beautiful, it has a 1:10 ratio dual focuser which is just so precise.

It’s only 72mm aperture but the first apochromat (APO) refractor I have owned, this means it is well colour corrected (the colours …

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As I looked out of the window at 6.30am on the morning the clocks went back it was pouring with rain and the wind was blowing strongly. Did I really want to take my cold and cycle in this? I nearly didn’t but in the end the weather further north was nowhere near as bad and I don’t want to be a fair-weather cyclist!

I met up with my brother around the midpoint between our homes near Warwick services on the M40 at Burton Dassett Hills Country Park. At 8.45am it was wet and bleak on top of the hill …

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Fairly uneventful cycle to and from work in glorious autumnal weather. On the way in I did a 17 mile route via Appleford, Long Wittenham, Little Wittenham, North Moreton, South Morteon and Cholsey. ON the way back I basically reversed the route but removed the loop via Little and Long Wittenham, this is almost 4 miles shorter which is quite surprising. Of course it’s almost dark by the time I get home now so don’t want to spend too long on the roads making the routes longer.

At the time of writing I’m currently running 7th on the Run.GPS Community …

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Cotswolds last week and the Chilterns this week. This was the toughest training ride I’ve done. Not especially long but there were some ‘serious’ hills on this one. I borrowed the route from Bikely which basically crosses the Chilterns from west to east and back again in a circular route. I didn’t know many of the roads but I knew Watlington Hill was going to be a proper climb. In the end that one wasn’t too bad, it was long and steep but not really a problem.

Anyway, I started in Crowmarsh Gifford and headed north through Benson …

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I’ve been spending some time tweaking the templates. I wasn’t completely happy with listing every entry from the LEJOG category on the home page and swamping all the other content. So I’ve gone for a summary/more layout for a bit to see if that works better in my head.

I also spotted quite a few errors in the templates whilst I was doing this, for example anything in the LEJOG category wouldn’t show as a single entry! Hopefully I’ve eliminated all/most of these now.

In other site news, I’ve slightly changed the galleries so the thumbnails should load a little …

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