If you’ve not heard of it before, 30 Days of Biking is a personal challenge with a charitable edge. People pledge to ride their bike every day in April, and for every two that do, 1USD is donated to World Bicycle Relief. This year we have six riders attempting the challenge.
Day 21
Here at Singletrack Towers it was sunny again. Sunnier than forecast even. There was the usual conflict between taking time out to sit in the sun over lunch, or cracking on in the hope of getting finished early and heading for the hills. Once again, our 30 Days of Biking riders had their ‘but I have to ride my bike’ excuse at the ready if they needed it to justify playing out again.
Adele
Playing ‘Where’s Wally’ at Swinley Forest.
Giles
The weather was what the weather should have been again. That brought the cycle / train commuters out of hibernation, there were seven literally piling their bikes on top of each other in the two car train. Tempers were frayed, my tiny pink bike took up little space. We then rode through the sunny back streets and alleyways to get to work.
Greg
Day 21 – Another day, another commute on the train bookended by some time on the bike. A full day of work saw little time for fun rides, but plans for the weekend have been hatched involving bags full of stuff straped to people and bikes. It’ll be time to spend some time sleeping in some ditches and bothies somewhere in the Lake District.
Hannah
I was going to go out for a long evening moorland ride, but then family logistics didn’t work out. So then I was just going to nip up the hill behind my house for 5 minutes. But then I got to the top and thought ‘if I just go round that bend, the view will be better’. And then I thought ‘I wonder what it looks like over there?’. And then ‘I’ve come this far, I may as well go down there’. And then ‘Oh, I’ll do this little loop’. An hour later, I was heading back home, the moon rising over the hills behind and the sun setting over the hills in front. The kind of ride that #30DaysofBiking is all about.
Lara
Totally forgot to look out for the Queen’s birthday beacon on the hills on my way home from the gym. Still, I had my own little beacon. Happy birthday Queenie.
Rachel
I was going to say something nice about my three ride day (1 – to work, 2- from the train to the hills, 3 – playing on the trails) and eking out the last possibly photons of daylight (to duly reference my photo).
At this point I realised that each of these rides I’d had some extremely near misses and perhaps they weren’t as nice as first thought.
To start my day I had a near head on collision with two dopey dog walkers, their dopey dogs and a rider coming the other way. On my second ride a changing-lane-without-checking lorry nearly took me out on an inner city ring road. The final one was squarely my fault, a faster than I have skills for, overcooked corner leading to a full on smack into a very square 2 foot rock and a consequential pile up of riders from behind. Somehow my bikes and I survived all of these with minimal damage (although I’m not entirely certain my front wheel is still round following the rock incident) – some days things just don’t go your way.
Weekend Ahoy!
The weekend is approaching, and some of us are looking at the forecast and hoping the weather holds. Tom Hill, husband of our late deputy editor Jenn Hill, will not be on the bike, and instead will be pounding the streets of London in the London Marathon, in aid of St Gemma’s Hospice. You can read more about this here, or you can head straight over and donate here.
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