I was out the door by 8 but with fettling small bits here and there in the shed I eventually got a receipt at 8.40 and was heading along the A421 out of Bletchley.
My route took me out through the villages towards Bicester and onto Chipping Norton. As you pass Bicester the terrain changes as you get towards the Cotswold's and it starts to get hillier.
With the Giro still out of action I'd taken the front faired trike out, this was a good choice in the wind but the extra weight was a drag on the hills. I arrived at Chipping Norton at about 12.30, 4hrs to do 70km was slow but I'll put that down to wind, heavy equipment and beer :-D
After getting the obligatory cold pie and sandwich from the supermarket I spent 30 minutes chatting and waving to friends that were out on the Chiltern Cotswold 200 audax.
I left in a group of 4 for the next hilly section but that only lasted for about 2 miles out of town when I found a nice downhill and disappeared into the distance at 80kph. I was expecting them to catch me up on the next uphill but they never appeared in my mirror again and or routes split as I got to the A40.
The next section between Minster Lovell and Didcot was SW so the headwind I had earlier turned into a great tailwind and I found myself spinning out the gears at about 40kph for most of the section.
I stopped at Didcot to refill my bottles again and then headed around the lanes to Wallingford, my next control. I had a problem getting a receipt here as the bank ATM's I went to either didn't work or had no paper in them. As I don't now the town I couldn't find anywhere open, so now I'll have to see if my GPS track can be used to validate the route to prove I went there. It will match the other receipts regarding time and place so I can only try.
The last section took me back northwards through Thame and Aylesbury and it seemed to go on for ages not helped by the lack of decent lights on the trike. The IQ fly on the front is brilliant but if you have no power to it, it will not work :-D ( must fix the dynamo!).
The lanes around Aylesbury were dark and it was almost impossible to see the potholes in the road with the flashing front light and a head torch.
This again slowed me down and I eventually got back to the start at 20.30, just under 12hrs out 9.30hrs moving with an average speed of 22kph.
Not great but not too bad on a heavy trike and a total of 3221m of climbing.
New frame update,
The new Giro frame coming over from the states will not be here for another 2-3 weeks :-( I was hoping to get it in time to build up for next weekends 350km audax and the 400km one at the end of the month.
All is not lost though as I sent a cheeky email to Kevin at D-Tek recumbents (Little Thetford, nr Ely) asking him what he had that I could borrow for a couple of weeks.
I got a reply and he is going to lend me a new Bacchetta Bellandare that he happens to have in stock, so that I can give him a verdict on how it fares on long rides.
LWB recumbents are more likely to be found stateside and have never really got a following over here, in Europe we tend to go for the SWB and lowracer type of recumbent.
Here is a page of the different type of recumbents for those who are not sure what the hell I'm on about :-D.
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