14th Dec 2008

A bit of a last minute decision to go for a ride with my brother early on Sunday morning. We decided to meet in Moreton-in-Marsh and he had listed a tentative set of villages to aim for and I quickly knocked up a route on Run.GPS to follow late the previous evening.

We headed NW from Moreton to Batsford and up Dorn Hill to Draycott continuing on to Chipping Campden which is where our planned routes began to diverge and it all went a bit wrong! I thought we were aiming to cycle through Broadway going down and back up the steep hills, my brother planned to bypass the village and go via Broadway Hill. I had planned to go down Willersey Hill to avoid the main road but we missed the turning as my brother thought we were heading to Broadway Tower! I think we should have maybe worked out where we were going and I shouldn’t have done a Run.GPS route late at night.

We ended up at the top of Fish Hill on the A44. I was a little ahead and there was a big congregation of motorcyclists at the top of the hill, I turned right and headed off to Broadway not knowing that we could have gone straight on to the tower. It was too late then, I was committed (at 35mph) to going down Fish Hill! Which was fun! And Broadway is pretty!

Through Broadway we of course had to climb back up the ridge which we did via Snowshill, a decent steady climb and hill training is good! We then followed my brother’s route and I ignored Run.GPS. There weren’t any villages to cycle through but I did bag a trigpoint on top of Custdean Hill on the grass verge. We cycled close to Temple Guiting and the Cotswold Farm Park. Past Condicote, Longborough and Sezincote to Bourton-on-the-Hill. We were back on the A44 for the brief steep drop back into Moreton-in-Marsh.

A good ride in cool, calm conditions with one slip up that gave us a nice climb. Discrepancy in distance is due to me messing up the start/atop button in Run.GPS and missing the first 6mi of the recording!

Distance :: 23.65 mi (GPSr track is 29.72 mi)
Time :: 2h03m43s
Average Active Speed :: 11.47 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

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John Talbot

The main protagonist behind this nonsense. The website title is inspired by the lyrics of the B-side to Lily the Pink by The Scaffold. "The buttons of your mind were difficult to find and my fingers far too clumsy."