Good luck to those of you riding the Etape Caledonia on Sunday. Weather looking a bit dodgy but at least the very strong east wind looks to be calming down. I’m looking forward to 81 traffic free miles, well apart from the 3500 other bikes.

Good luck and enjoy.

3,500 bikes – surely a recipe for accidents? Best tactic is gonna be to stick to the front, aye?

Hoping for reasonable weather too. Loch Rannoch can be a bit dreich at the best of times.

Sticking to the front might be difficult as I’m one of the last groups to go. Obviously no one put over 5:30 in their seeding time. So there is either a lot of fit folk or a lot of optimistic folk riding it. Still gives me plenty of folk to chase down/hide behind 😉

I leave at 7.46. Bit confused by that but plenty of people to hide behind and chase down.

Bloody hell Gary-M’s post must have subliminally affected me

You all go out for your wee pootle.

The real men are going out for a longer ride in Deeside. 😀

I’m off at 7:10. Remember to wave on your way past.

kevonakona freeky but I’m off at 7:46 too, rider number 3651.

No Smee, much as I’d love to. It’s on the to do list but maybe in a couple of years.

Smee why has your ‘are you doing the Marmotte’ question disappeared?

Weather forecasts are currently all over the place. What’s the scam on mudguards?

Good luck with it. I think it’s fair to saw it’s gonna be wetter than Atlantis out there on Sunday 🙁
I heard a rumour that Kevin Dangerous is doing a roaring trade in pedalos!

Waaaaaaaaah!

Good luck chaps. Can’t be worse weather than Bealach Beag.

IMO no point going for mudguards, if you run them you’ll get covered in other people’s spray anyway so might as well not bother.

Gary, i’m 3717

and considering full wetsuit:-)

good luck , couple of guys from the club are doing it but call me tight , im not paying 50 quid to ride on the road …

im off doing the deeside 200k audax with smee

Patches of blue sky spotted over Pitlochry direction. It might not be too bad.
Bit of a wind though

Some eejit has spread carpet tacks over the course and the event has been halted. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8054215.stm

Tossers. I’m not riding it but my gf is – will wait til she’s back to hear what happened from her point of view. Hope she’s OK, she’ll be really upset if her brand new bike has had its tyres shredded to pieces!

I rode the route with some folk off here (druidh, dgoab etc) a few weeks ago, the weather today is much better than it was then, it’s actually turned out really nice.

FFS!

Just heard from her, she’s OK but had to sit around on the road for 40 mins waiting for the police to sweep it then they were escorted through at 15mph. About the one saving grace is that they were sat in the sunshine rather than in the freezing rain!
She said a couple of people were injured falling off as a result of burst tyres though.

Whoever did it should just be hauled up in front of 3500 angry cyclists and asked to explain themselves – wonder how long they’d last…

http://www.commentonline.co.uk/general/BattleContinuestoPreventMayClosedRoads.htm

I can see the point of the people who want the roads open to keep tourism flowing for the day but surely running the risk of seriously hurting people is a bit over the top.

I can see their point of view, no other Sportive runs on closed roads, but equally it’s one day (actually about half a day…) a year and brings in thousands of pounds in tourism anyway since the EC organisers refuse to allow on-the-morning registration thus forcing most riders to stay over on Saturday night in the area.

London manages to close whole areas down several times a year for sporting events (Marathon etc) and things like G8 summit meetings…

If it was a militant member of the ACRE people in that link they’ve probably done themselves no favours.

This is horrible, someone could have been seriously injured! Not a good way to show displeasure at all!

It’s obvious really..apart from the :roll:good few of us, this country hates everything to do with cycling. And always will.

http://www.commentonline.co.uk/general/BattleContinuestoPreventMayClosedRoads.htm

Nice balanced article there 🙄

Just got back home after this. Ended up only riding 60 miles as we were held at Kinnloch Rannoch for about 45 minutes then told it might be another hour before the road is open. So I and many others just headed back the road to Pitlochry. Pretty pissed off, was riding really well and on for a sub 4:30 time. Didn’t bother going through the timing thing at the end or collecting a medal as it meant nothing. Up until that point I had a fantastic weekend up there. Some folk were getting buses back to Pitlochry which I found a bit daft.

BoardinBob – Member

http://www.commentonline.co.uk/general/BattleContinuestoPreventMayClosedRoads.htm

Nice balanced article there

That’s from last year. Loads of locals out cheering on the riders today.

How did you get on druidh? Did you ride the full route? And yes there were loads of locals out cheering and clapping, shame one idiot decided to ruin the day for so many people. We was robbed.

They held us for close on an hour. It was getting pretty chilly after the climb. Eventually, they rustled up a police bike and we did the descent behind it at a “controlled” pace. They then cut out the Fortingal loop (about 10 miles). I got back in 4:12, but tbh – I didn’t really have it in my legs for a while after the long stop. My target was originally 5 hours, so I reckon I’d have made that with something to spare.

No punctures!

Word reaches me from Scotland that the local constabulary are following up “a positive line of inquiry” in to this. Which is good news.

What kind of nasty, selfish, spiteful berk does something like this?

Who are these people who object to closing roads? One **** event, one, and they act like this. Going on about ‘loss to business’, or some other such shite. It’s one **** day, ffs! 🙄

If those responsible are caught, then they should be charged with criminal damage, as a minimum, and made to pay for new tyres of every single cyclist who suffered damage. A couple of hundred times £30 or so might make them think again.

The London Marathon causes far more ‘inconvenience’ for many Londoners; we just put up with it, and enjoy the event. It’s only one day a year.

Just goes to show what small-minded parochial attitudes some folk have.

Salt their fields.

Let me first of all say that I don’t agree with what was done, and that I hope they find those responsible and prosecute them to the full extent of the law (although I expect they will argue they never expected to hurt anyone, just disrupt the race?). From their point of view it presumably resulted in longer road closures and disruption so can’t have been too effective unless the idea is to scare off the event for next year.

Whilst yes it does bring in good money for the local economy, in in particular parts of the tourist sector, there are other parts of the community who do suffer and presumably believe that any net benefit to the economy isn’t reaching them. Imagine if you run an ordinary business that doesn’t benefit from cyclists being in the area – you loose a days trade, or if you are part of the angling tourism industry that is popular in the area, you may loose a whole weekends trade etc. Now imagine if you live in one of the villages cut off for 3+ hours for the race to go through – this isn’t London, if the roads shut there is no way in or out the village – you are a prisoner so that a bunch of skinny guys in fluorescent Lycra can rush through the village. Then you believe you’ve made your points to the local Council but they ignore them and close the road anyway (possibly, according to some reports, without following the legally required procedures).

The alternative of running it with the roads open actually seems even worse to me – 3000+ bikes on those roads would to all intents and purposes close the roads for hours anyway.

There may be better ways of managing it etc – but its a fairly remote area with limited policing/resources and few alternative routes for getting people and equipment around the course to control it.

Would we all be so outraged if it was a horse race or long distance run that was being disrupted / disrupting the local services.

How many people were inconvenienced and for how long? Given the disruption of the myriad events that shut down London and the amount of disruption caused, I think your point is rather a failure.

If it was a horse race or long distance run, or the Devizes to Westminster Canoe race, or even the world worm charming championships, yes I WOULD be that outraged.

A tiny minority of people were inconvenienced. That tiny number would have been able to plan ahead, prepare and deal with this, as all of those of us in central London have to do all so often, and to be honest, they should be grateful for the interest in their area as well as the tourist £££s that such an event bring in to an area where the economy is suffering.

Ok, how many people are ‘seriously affected’ by this event? A few thousand? Hundred? Dozen?

On Marathon day, in certain parts of London, were there to be a major incident, such as a large fire, the sheer numbers of spectators and competitors would mean that the emergency services would be severely hampered by the chaos that would surely ensue. Therefore, contingency plans are put in place.

Can country folk not manage this?

Imagine if you run an ordinary business that doesn’t benefit from cyclists being in the area – you loose a days trade, or if you are part of the angling tourism industry that is popular in the area, you may loose a whole weekends trade etc.

Big deal. This event was on a Sunday, no? So, they’ve ‘lost’ how much? A tenner? 20 quid?

I see that locals might be concerned about safety/emergency service access, but to want to deny thousands of others their enjoyment, just so you don’t lose a few quid, is just bloody selfish.

Salt their fields.
Burn their crops.

on brighter note … at least the weather was good … musta been a good headwind though

We had a cracker of a day, except the headwind from ballater to forfar ……

I don’t think you’re allowed to fish on a Sunday.

Now imagine if you live in one of the villages cut off for 3+ hours for the race to go through – this isn’t London, if the roads shut there is no way in or out the village – you are a prisoner so that a bunch of skinny guys in fluorescent Lycra can rush through the village.

I’m sorry, I’m still not seeing the downside here? 😛