Pricycles

This weekend I made an attempt with 3 others to climb each of the highest peaks in England, Wales & Scotland in a 24 hour period.

Traveling up to Fort William Saturday morning took the best part of the day, so a planned stay at a youth hostel in Glen Nevis Saturday night enabled us a fresh start Sunday morning.

Departure time at 09:20 followed a good sized breakfast, the best way to start any action packed day! £3.50 at the hostel got you toast, cereal, apple & orange juice, tea or coffee, yogurt & a ham & cheese bread roll.

Rapid Ascent

The trail up Ben Nevis is a fair warm up that quickly gains altitude with a bit of meandering before levelling approximately half the altitude of the summit. After the short ease of gradient, the trail began to zig-zag up through massive areas of rubble with varying sizes of boulders & rocks with a few patches of snow for good measure, an indicator of the sort of altitude we were at.

From the base of the mountain there was only a few patches of snow visible, with notice board’s warning not to go to the edge of the north face (very vertical!) due to overhanging snow, a problem that seemed unlikely from the bottom.

Top of the UK

Nearing the last 100 metres, the main features visible in the snow-scape were the cairns that proved invaluable for safe navigation. At the sumit was the trig point & what I beleive to be an old observatory, now used for emergency shelter. Both were just about through the snow, but the shelter had a moat surrounding it some 3 feet deep indicating just how much snow was up there! Descending the snow section didn’t take long with soft cushioning for landing feet. At about halfway down the mountain, a search & rescue Sea King helicopter appeared over the mountain with no apparent direction heading, hopefully only executing a training exercise.

Don't get too close to the edge!

At 14:30 we had reached the bottom & with 10 minutes of organisation (or lack of it maybe??) we began the drive to Scaffell Pike in the Lake District, arriving at 20:20 sunday evening. The mountain to climb had an ominous cap of cloud to it! Sure to make conditions difficult. Managing to complete the majority of the climb by natural light, & warning showers of rain, we reached the summit that lurked in the cloud & stern wind. As we quickly began our descent the rain set in steadily, paying of for donning waterproofs in the warning showers. The descent in the dark proved tricky to determine quite how far we had come down due to limited visibility & different lighting. We reached the car at 00:35 Monday morning & promptly started for Snowdown.

What lurks above???

We reached the car park at the summit of Llanberis Pass at 05:15 Monday. Shortly after a few bits had been rummaged in, we realised the car keys were missing & a 40 minute search ensued before turning up, thank goodness!

At 05:55 we began our ascent on the Pyg Track up Snowdon, in breezy, showery conditions. Unfortunately the conditions became progressively worse before reaching any exposed summit or ridge with strong & unpredictable gusts making matters dangerous. Despite the determination to make progress, as a group we decided it best to retreat having reached approximately 3/4 of the way to the summit. Frustrating but the mountains need to be respected, & that we did, they’ll all be there for next time!

Starting at 7:30am on Tuesday 12th May 2009, Pricycles extraordinaire Dave Price set at record time on his commute through Hereford of 15 minutes! Knocking a whole minute of his previous time.

Long hair has no 'Samson' effect!

Not only that but he caught up with his brother ‘Prawn Rice’ after being overtaken up Ayleston Hill on his Honda VFR. After levelling side by side at the traffic lights at the end of Commercial Road (past the foot of the hill), Prawn looked a little bemused to see his little ‘Bro’ sat beside him. “He must have bin amazed because I beat him of the line once the lights changed too!” Dave was heard to comment.

After work Prawn Rice commented “you looked a little rosey in the cheeks mind!”

All in good humour, the battle against ‘Metal Death Boxes’ & ‘Motoring Morons’ continues on a more serious note…

For as long as I’ve commuted by bike, beating the the clock has driven me to push that bit harder, not just to ‘pip’ the clocking in machine before it reaches the hour of labour, but for the pure fun (read pain) of bettering my two wheeled times & of course average & maximum speed

Wacky Races

The first commute headed downhill from my old home on Stonewall Hill to Presteigne for 3 miles, often on mighty chilly mornings with no uphills to warm up on first. If memory serves me well, it took around 7 minutes from door to door on the way & 13 minutes of relentless uphill on the way home, a journey that takes around 10 minutes by car in the windey lanes.

Work then took me on a daily commut to Ludlow, some 18-19 miles each way. It took a little while to get my head round commuting that sort of distance. A trial run one Sunday took around 1hour 20 minutes going at a steady pace. The first route that looked best followed entirely back roads through Lingen, Wigmore & finally Ludlow. A route packed with tough climbs. For a good while I thought nothing of it! On that route the time reached 1 hour 5 minutes. The tough route certainly helped in a climbing edge for my legs & fitness.

Just scanning over a map one day I spotted a detour that cut out a couple of the climbs after Lingen & also totalled a lower mileage, Result! The time came down to 58 minutes & a distance of 18.32 miles.

The final route I tried, followed the main road from Knighton to Bromfield via Leintwardine, then heading to Ludlow south on the A49. This gave the record of 55 minutes 20 seconds on my Bikes Flight Deck computer! I’ll also add I was riding my winter road bike with by no means the lightest componentry, surely on my top bike I could better that in the summer…

…not before a big move to Hereford with a new route & pesky cars & traffic lights to contend with & slow progress down, on 3 occasions I’ve overtaken cars down Aylestone Hill just coasting on my bike! What’s up with that?! They need a bike I reckon!

Well the time has been set on the Hereford commuting route of 16 minutes, the aim is to get it under 15 minutes, but hold on! I had a jolly good thrash on my road bike at the weekend over to Ludlow, along the familiar route through Leintwardine. Rolling in at Pearce Cycles, the same bike computer only on my Roubaix, calibrated with the same tyres etc. read 55 minutes 5 seconds! Who’s a happy chappy then…

Dave