kent
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The (Not Quite) Midsummer 300
When I started to audax a few years back I came up with a 300km route that I planned to do on midsummer’s day – along the Sussex and southern Kent coast, then turn inland and cut across Romney Marsh over the Downs and through Canterbury to Whitstable on the north coast, and back to…
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Doorstep Epic Plus
A few years my friends Jo, George, and Oli, joined Le Club des Cinglés du Mont Ventoux. Their stories from that day led me to attempt the feat last year. Their rides that day also inspired the idea of the Doorstep Epic. I’ve toyed with the idea of having a bash at George’s particular Doorstep…
100 climbs, all of the hills, ashdown forest, barhatch lane, box hill, chalkpit lane, climbing, coldharbour lane, coombe lane, cycling, devils dyke, ditchling beacon, doorstep epic, hills, ide hill, kent, kidds hill, leith hill, morvelo, north downs, reilly cycleworks, ride everything, south downs, steyning bostal, surrey, surrey hills, sussex, the wall, toys hill, weald, white down, yorkshill
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Down to Downs [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud audax perm]
We start the climb up to Black Hill in darkness, up through Five Hundred Akre Wood, a tunnel of trees lit by the many lumens of our front lights. With few leaves on the trees the ridge of the Ashdown Forest can be seen shadowed ominously against the last remnants of twilight. It’s a long…
![Down to Downs [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud audax perm]](https://themanfromicon.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-1480428867785.jpg?w=1024)
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Here to There to Here
“Spoke to Andrew at TiC who wants to know when we’re going up to say hello?” Within a few minutes we’ve planned to ride to Cambridge and back in a weekend. Two hundred and twenty odd kilometres each way. The idea to enter the 2017 Transcontinental race as a team means it doesn’t take much…
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The Shark [Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud 2016 ride #2]
Waiting in an underground car park early in the morning as rain falls outside. So starts my first 200km audax of the year, the second ride of this year’s Grimpeurs du Sud campaign (this ride has over 3000m of climbing). Technically the fourth, but I didn’t make the start of the first, or finish the…
![The Shark [Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud 2016 ride #2]](https://themanfromicon.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/shark-0383.jpg?w=1024)
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Kent Invicta Grimpeur [Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud 2016 ride #1]
A quiet, pretty corner of Kent, lanes tucked away between interlocking major roads. Two laps of the same circuit, first clockwise, then anti-clockwise. A tight loop, repeating place names on signposts, never reached and pointed in different directions. Identical roads, the same hills, but dissimilar when approached from the opposite direction. Those fast sweeping drops…
![Kent Invicta Grimpeur [Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud 2016 ride #1]](https://themanfromicon.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/tweaked-0027.jpg?w=1024)
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Greenwich Mean Climb 300km [Brevet des Grimpeur du Sud ride #6]
04:29, Dyke Road, Brighton, heading for London. Underworld are played on the radio in the car and two men in their mid-forties reminisce about coming home at this time of the morning rather than going out for a bike ride. 05:47, Blackheath, London. Applying chamois cream behind a bush on the edge of Blackheath. There…
![Greenwich Mean Climb 300km [Brevet des Grimpeur du Sud ride #6]](https://themanfromicon.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/tweaked-colour-14.jpg?w=1024)
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One Way Ticket
One way ticket, only one way home. A flat before I’ve even started. A lap of Cambridge looking for an open bike shop to borrow a track pump. Saving that gas canister for emergencies in the middle of nowhere. Really must buy a decent mini pump. Buy an extra gas canister. The fear of not…
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Diary of a Novice Randonneur, pt.4 – Fairies Flattest Possible 300
It’s some time between half six and seven a.m. and I’m sat in a village hall in Kent with a bacon sarnie and a cup of tea. We’re about 115km into my first 300km audax and I feel slightly dazed. There is me and my friend Caven who I am riding with. We should be…
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The Longest Day
I have places names and road numbers scribbled on bits of paper in my pocket. Today is going to be the longest ride of the year so far. Looking at the forecast it’s probably the warmest too. Gilet and arm warmers are stripped off by the time I get to Lewes. It’s a long steady…
the man from icon 