www.dadswell.co.uk Mostly cycling records, mostly on three wheels
Truly, a capital ride !
October 2002
Hi
there, loyal readers ..... (I hope).
With the disappointment of Dave Johnson & me missing the Birmingham to
London tandem-tricycle record, I waited several days before starting to
be interested in the weather again. I also needed to find and fit
three new sprockets to the tandem, as we (he?) had managed to tear them
apart in our 110 miles of aggression.
In
the end, we had to tolerate a couple of weeks of winds from the eastern
sector, which were of no use for the one remaining schedule that I had
submitted with the RRA. This was for Marina Bloom and me to
establish a tandem-tricycle record over the 150 miles of the Cardiff to
London route. The standard to beat was 8 hours, and I was sure we
could beat that by an hour. I had already had a schedule on file
for a total time of 6h 45m, and so I had hastily altered a few details
before sending it to the RRA.
The
first opportunity that cropped up was for Wednesday 23rd October, and it
looked quite good. On the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the charts
for the Wednesday were all consistent, and so we set off on the long
drive to Wales with the sun shining down on us, and our hearts full of
optimism.
You're waiting for the catch, but there didn't seem to be one. We
arrived at the start with sufficient time, and were despatched (by
Audrey Hughes, as ever) at 1300 precisely from the main door of the
National Museum of Wales. Quite a large crowd applauded as we
clattered down the twenty concrete steps, and we were soon making our
way out of town.
Some minor delays coupled with Rumney Hill left us slightly outside our
schedule at the first check. However, we made good progress after
leaving Newport, and would surely have been ahead of the plan by
Chepstow if I hadn't sent us up the last hill in far too high a gear.
Oh, and those steps outside the museum.... well, I might've made that
bit up ... but you never know, do you?
We
zoomed down towards the Severn Bridge, and were marshalled onto the
cycle path by Pauline and Alan Strong. As we approached, Alan
shouted "Watch the Kerb!", but I still managed to hit it with a
tremendous bang, and I can't believe that we didn't end up skidding
along on the forks. Getting over the bridge was without serious
incident, although we still managed to hit something on the way off,
which again seemed likely to have given us a puncture at least.
You do have to be careful with these suspension bridges - once you're
past the centre, it's easy to work up a tremendous speed .... and you
mustn't forget that a 30 mph crash could easily put you over the
railings.
But
still, we reached England, and were soon on the minor roads through
Olveston and Tockington. Before the Severn Bridge had been built,
the Cardiff to London route was much more elegant. You would take
the A48 from Cardiff to Gloucester, and then the A40 from Gloucester to
the London finish point at Marble Arch. However, with the arrival
of the bridge during the 1960s, it was possible to take a much shorter
route, if you didn't mind doing some cross-country stuff as you made
your way across to the Bath Road at Chippenham. But enough of
that. As soon as you leave Tockington, it's bottom gear time, for
the grind up Washingpool Hill to the A38.
When we got to the top, I was surprised to see that we were still
hanging onto the schedule. We then followed the End to End route
for half a mile before turning right towards Chipping Sodbury. We
made our way up onto the Cotwolds, and at the Acton Turville check, we
were still level. The night before, I'd looked at the details of
the schedule, and noticed that the times given were assuming a level
speed throughout. Sometimes, this isn't a bad assumption, but I
was fairly sure that we would be slowing up from Reading onwards because
of traffic - to say nothing of the fact that it was going to be dark by
then!
And
so, realistically, being "on schedule" at 50 miles didn't really mean
that we were likely to be "on schedule" at the finish. Lucky we
had 75 minutes between our schedule and the minimum standard, I think.
We were moving well as we passed Castle Combe and approached Chippenham.
We were actually going to be ahead of schedule. Until I took a
wrong turn in the town, which ended with us being stuck behind a
stationary bus for what seemed like a decade. When we reached the
checkpoint, we were level with schedule again.
As
we rode away from the town, I realised that when I'd previously ridden
over this route (1996), the way through Chippenham had been different -
and I'd carelessly just followed the way of yesteryear. But there
was (again) no time to reminisce, as there were hills to climb on the
short section to Calne. We were a minute down at Calne.
There is then a very long, draining rise called Labour In Vain Hill to
Beckhampton Cross. That was just awful, but we kept things
together, and were going quite fast as we made our way along to
Marlborough. In the chaos that is the Market Square we just
avoided being run over by a bright yellow Porsche, and were a minute
down at the Town Hall. This was almost exactly halfway, and I
wasn't exactly rejoicing as we changed down through the gears to deal
with the large hill out of the town.
But
once you're up that one, there aren't really any other big obstacles to
deal with. We were holding onto the schedule at Hungerford, and were
actually a few seconds up at Newbury. Unfortunately, the lights in
Thatcham make it just about the worst place in the world to get through,
and so we needed to be very nippy once we got onto the road to Theale.
A
brief, planned, stop was made near the Pangbourne Lane roundabout, where
we took lights on board, and stocked up with enough drink to take us to
London. We approached Reading knowing that we were still ahead of
schedule (just!), and wondering just how bad things would be in the
town.
We
were six minutes down when we left Reading. At Maidenhead
(definitely dark by now) we had slipped to seven minutes, and by Slough
we were nine minutes down. We conceded that we probably wouldn't
beat 7 hours.
This was obvious when we reached Cranford and our deficit was 13
minutes. Part of our problem was heavy traffic, but a lot of the
time loss related to the fact that the tandem-trike isn't very
manoeuvrable, and wherever it goes, it's always going to be unexpected
(particularly in the dark). We only needed one car to fail to
notice our wide rear end (not a reference to Marina!), and we'd've been
in trouble.
So
it was stop-start past Hounslow and to Chiswick. Things looked up
for a while after the Hogarth roundabout and over the Hammersmith
Flyover, but there were still too many busy junctions for us to really
keep flowing.
But
we did eventually reach the Museums, and the turn into Exhibition Road,
and then into Hyde Park. For some reason, we seemed to make heavy
weather of the park, but we emerged at the far end, and did the last
little jump around the roundabout to the finish. Mightily
relieved, but slightly disappointed with the time, we took refuge back
in the park and waited for the car. Within a few minutes, we were
all reunited and the racing season had finally ended.
Don
Glover gave us an official time of 7 hours 4 minutes 35 seconds, which
was 20 minutes down on my "guess", but still 55 minutes faster than the
standard. Not a vintage performance, but I think we're reasonably
happy to see the job done and the social season earned.
Just for completeness, here's the weather chart showing reliable west winds
