BCQ ride 4

Monday 31st October 2022

BCQ locations
265 Stoke Bruerne

This morning I decided to ride up the canal towards Stoke Bruerne for the BCQ location at the waterways museum there.
Although the café here is less than 10 miles away I somehow seem to only have been there once before. perhaps it's because it's so close to home.

As I now have a touring / "gravel" bike (well it's got 38mm all terrain tyres on it 😄) I decided to ride up the towpath all the way there.

Glorious sunshine meant lovely views of the countryside and a change to be there instead of fighting traffic on the busy roads nearby.

The wildlife was out and about all around, although the floating bloated sheep had seen better days!

I did inform the waterways guy who I saw while I was at the café.

The "Café" was actually The Boat Inn on the canal-side opposite the museum, they sell great coffee, cake and sausage rolls if you go there for the BCQ or just a look around.

Kilometres Cycled – 34.53
Checkpoint locations Visited – 1

Total KM Cycled – 251.19
Total Checkpoint locations Visited – 8

 BCQ Ride 3

Sunday 9th October 2022

BCQ locations
166 Old Warden
161 Woburn

After 2 nights camping with the ALC I'd plotted a route to take in 2 BCQ locations on the way home, one at Old Warden and the other at Woburn.
The route wasn't the most direct and having had a couple of days on a bike I was still getting used to, I knew it was going to be a hard days ride.

Eventually I'd packed away, loaded the bike up with camping kit and headed off into a stiff headwind at just after 11.00.
The path I had chosen along the riverside to avoid a busy roundabout became a muddy track but it wasn't too long before I got back on the road.

Traffic was the usual Sunday morning racers as I cycled parallel to the A1. Sweating into a headwind with loaded front panniers was hard work and it kepf up nearly all the way home.

Old Warden

As I cycled into Old Warden I stopped to check where the location was and the phone said I was there. I looked right and I was!

By this point I had started to make my way across the Greensand Ridge, it's not that hilly but you are constantly just going up and down. The twisty lanes didn't help with not being able to get any speed up before the next hill.

I stopped for food and drink at a garage on the outskirts of Flitwick and Ampthill. The rest did help but it was still rolling all the way.

Woburn

After climbing up, over and flying down through Woburn Abbey Deer park the next location was at the crossroads in the village centre.

Now it was just over the last hill and down through Milton Keynes home.

Kilometres Cycled – 64.51
Checkpoint locations Visited – 2


Total KM Cycled – 216.66
Total Checkpoint locations Visited – 7

BCQ ride 2 

Saturday 8th October 2022

BCQ Locations - 
196 Graffham Water
195 Hilton turf maze
191 Kings College Cambridge

As I was camping at St Neots I'd looked up what BCQ locations were in the surrounding areas.
There was one not far away at Graffham Water and another in Hilton. I did see one in Cambridge town centre I could add on if I felt ok on the new bike (I'm used to riding a recumbent so wasn't sure how my backside would be after the ride over the day before).

Another one of the campers does the challenge also so had planned a route to collect a few herself.
We decided to do the route I'd done and head into Cambridge also, my backside would just have to put up with it!!

We left the campsite up through the town centre towards Huntingdon before heading west towards our first location at Graffham Water and the first coffee.
Location found, Question answered, picture taken and back towards the A1 junction at Buckden, this time we decided to avoid the underpass (with trike stopping fences) and just rode across the roundabout.
If you are not a confident cyclist and don't want to cross a very busy road junction, the underpass is on the northbound side of the A1 carriageway.

Hilton turf maze

Back onto quieter lanes again we headed towards Hilton and eventually found the location after asking a friendly local where the maze was.

Onto the lanes again and heading for Cambridge. We have both done various audax rides in this area (Judith more so than me) so know the roads fairly well, this does give a false sense of security though and we had to turn round after missing a right turn as we were chatting as we went past.

On the outskirts of Cambridge we stopped for lunch at a garden centre that I'd passed many times in the truck but had never stopped at (lorry is too big!) The baked potato with seafood was amazing.

Following a cycle path route into Cambridge was brilliant until we got to the centre, perhaps heading in on a Saturday afternoon wasn't the greatest of ideas! I wasn't too bad being on a bike, but Judith was on a very low recumbent trike and probably found it harder to get through the people.

King College post box

We found the post-box for the BCQ answer and didn't hang about in the crowds. It was mental!

All we had to do now was head back to the campsite, which was an uneventful ride really.

Kilometres Cycled – 90.61
Checkpoints Visited – 3

Total KM Cycled – 152.15
Total Checkpoints Visited – 5

BCQ ride 1

Friday Oct 7th 2022

BCQ locations
164 Stevington
165 Bedford

As I had planned to head over to St Neots for an ALC meet and had been thinking about BQQ I decided to work a route out that took in some of the locations on the way over. It didn't add a lot of extra kilometres to the ride so why not! I worked out that over the weekend I could possibly get 7 locations without to much effort.

I planned the route using Ride With GPS as I have done over the years for all my rides. It's straight forward as all you have to do is put the Lat-Long reference (52.225566 -0.74295724) into it and it plots the route there. Save it, send to your GPS and ride away.

I loaded the bike up with camping gear, this was also the first camping trip on my new Sonder Santiago tourer so it was a good test. 

The route over took in 2 BCQ locations which also gave me chance to look at the places I'd never been to apart from riding straight past.

Kilometres Cycled – 61.54
Checkpoints Visited – 2


Total KM Cycled – 61.54
Total Checkpoint Visited – 2

 

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 My BCQ rides/diary.

Over the last year or so I have been chatting to Stephen Dee while camping at Association of Lightweight Campers meets about British Cycle Quest (BCQ). Stephen is the Cycling UK BCQ organiser and he hopes to complete the challenge himself next year.

Basically BCQ is a cycling challenge organised by Cycling UK where you cycle to 402 locations (link to the Google map) across the whole of England, Wales, Scotland and various islands and answer the question allocated to the location.

Looks like fun and will get me (and Dawn) to other locations around the UK for a few years to come.