tourist trophy
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 12 // December // The same, but different
For the final official Tourist Trophy ride of the year I came up with the idea to go “home” to Frimley and ride the hometown streets I bombed around on rattly-can sprayed single speeds, ‘racers’, and BMXs as a kid, and then the local Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire roads that were my playground when I…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 11 // November // Cornwall
The sun is rising into an otherwise empty sky as I ride out of Wadebridge across the bridge over the River Camel. This hundred metres or so will be the first and last flat part of today’s ride. The only other flat section is the ferry across the River Fowey at the southern most point…
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Tour of Britain
Back in January I read about a challenge that my friend Jo Burt posted on the road.cc website, the Tourist Trophy. The idea was simple – to go and ride in a different county each month in 2013. I read about this the day before I was due to ride to Surrey to visit friends…
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Coast
A zig-zag route with a profile like saw teeth. Narrow lanes between high hedges, rough and twisting. Stick and stones, mud and leaves, over pitted tarmac. Gently turning into a corner the front wheel follows the tangential line until it finds some traction. Getting out of the saddle uphill is like roller training, back wheel spinning but no…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 10 // October // Peaks and troughs
I’m on Winnats Pass in Derbyshire. I’m lying on the wet grass verge looking at my bike lying half on the road, half on the grass with me. I gaze down the hill, then up the hill, and then forlornly back at the bike. A moment ago I was riding up the hill. The gradient…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 9 // September // The Black Mountains
The YHA weren’t lying when they said the Wye Valley hostel was at the end of a “a steep unsurfaced road with a hairpin bend”. The first few hundred metres of the September TT ride was back up that steep driveway more suited to a ‘crosser or MTB. The hostel lies next to the River…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 8b // August // Norfolk
The next day I ride north into Norfolk to meet my friend James. I’ve not actually met James before, or even spoken to him, but he’s part of the Twitter cycling community and we’ve chatted (typed) online a fair bit. After zigzagging along some quiet lanes I pick up a main road north, through Dennington…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 8a // August // Suffolk
Riding the coastal flat lands of Suffolk, an edge of England made from clay and sand, being slowly reclaimed by the sea, it’s so flat that it is like actually riding on a map. The edges of the paper can’t be seen, extending away in all directs. The map isn’t completely flat though, it ripples…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Etape 7 // July // France
No words for this one yet, just some pictures. A combination of Tourist Trophy foreign country wildcard and Rapha Rising. Words will follow at some point in the future.
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 6a // June // Bath to Salisbury
a.k.a Getting lost in the mid-West The original plan was to travel by train to Salisbury on a Saturday morning followed by a leisurely meandering ride to Bath over two days. However a few days before the ride I realised that I’d planned the ride for the same weekend as the annual London to Brighton…
the man from icon 