A Day in the Mountains

Nothing to do with cycling! Today we decided to head up into the mountains to the North West of Alicant, to a place called Gaudalest. The village is famous for having eagles roosting in the cliffs opposite the village. When we got there, the queue for the carpark to see them and also to walk up to the Castle was out onto the road! We decided to head straight down to the reservoir for a spot of lunch. We headed down the road that we thought was right, but it was steep and narrow, we perserved and got to the road that we should have been on anyway!
We got to the dam and went over, the road we thought we could use alongside the reservoir was intact a private road, so we headed over the dam and stopped the other side. The path down to the water was steep and so we then thought to drive on a little and find somewhere else.
That didn’t work out so headed back and stopped where we had originally been.
After food and water, we headed along to try and get to the highest point in the mountains in the area. When we got to the crossroads with the road to the summit, it is a Spanish Army base, with communication masts at the top.
We then started to head back to Alicant and passing through 2 villages where there were diversions. A Friday afternoon and the locals were having festivals in both!
Drove back to Alicant, and stopped at Carrefour for some food to make sandwiches for tomorrow and Sunday, after a long walk round and filling a basket, we headed back home. For evening meal and catch up on the exploits today in the Vuelta! And a few beers!!

Military C70 aircraft at Cardiff Wales airport

Military aircraft made 3 passes of the runway at Rhoose while we were waiting for the flight to Alicant.

I only noticed it as we were expecting the A320 that we were due on to arrive.

I decided to take a video!

 

Military aircraft at Cardiff Wales airport

While we were waiting on departure lounge of the airport, a military aircraft possibly a C70 came into view. I decided to take a video which is on my Twitter page.  I then received a couple of requests from various news organisations wanting to use it!

It seemed fair to allow them, so I agreed.

Here is the link to my original tweet https://twitter.com/bristolbike/status/900303903442554881

Meet up

This is an idea that I have put together in about 10 minutes, so it may be totally unfeasible, but time will tell…

Over the past couple of weeks, various people have mentioned getting together at some stage to watch a Pro cycling race, the idea is sound but I like shouting at the TV too much during a race for it to be enjoyable for everyone else! So, I have a thought..

This weekend is the Ride London event. This is a heavily oversubscribed event, for which you have to apply in a public ballot for places on the ride, then I thought maybe all meet up in London for the weekend and participate in some of the events that are easier to get involved in..

Then I thought everyone doing Ride100 is raising money for charity and this got me thinking… Each year the British Heart Foundation have a ride from London to Brighton, a distance of about 54miles. I have done it a few times along with about 26000 other cyclists each year.

Next years event is Sunday 17 June 2018, so the question is… Who is up for the challenge?

I haven’t thought about logistics or anything else yet, just wanted to test the water and see how people feel.. Maybe get together on the Sat, see the sights of London, meal in the evening and ride on Sunday

I don’t want answers on a postcard, but if the idea appeals to you either DM me on twitter @bristolbike or email me at whitebridgesite@gmail.com

Depending on how many fancy it, can then maybe move forward to the planning stage in detail

Here is my Strava activity for London to Brighton from 2016
https://www.strava.com/activities/614635878

 

What to do on the Monday after the end of the tour?

Rather than get the blues with the end of the tour, this year have done something vastly different to normal!

My intention when I woke this morning was to at least catch some of the Tour of Wallonie on Eurosport this afternoon…

I could tell when I looked at the programme guide this morning and studied what was on Eurosport that all was not well!

When I commented that the cycling was on, and a different race to the last 3 weeks, was on. The look of what could be called disbelief suggested that I was not going to see any Belgian scenery this afternoon!

This lead almost directly to the idea of this blog! Now I just have to keep it up!!

Musings of a cyclist

OK, so I spend most of July 2017 either watching the Tour de France, reading about the said TdF, or on holiday!

Most of what I read was from blogs of people I have got to know from Twitter and this new attempt is entirely down to them! Partly @Benni1000 @InsidePeleton96 @JustProCycling and others that I will try and remember as I go along!

As a result I have sort of got the bug to begin a blog about cycling and other related / unrelated subjects which I will post here as and when…

I have spend most of today looking at reviews of the Tour, so I am not going to rehash (probably badly) there views. Go and read them for yourselves..

I will hopefully post stuff here from when go to Spain from the Vuelta