All Cheers - No Fears!

Sunday morning, British Summer Time has arrived and at 7.30am on Sunday morning I was up and ready for our 9am start. This was (even by my standards) a bit keen and the truth is that I was totally confused the night before so set the alarm (on my iPhone) to cover all eventualities: clocks forward or back and (crucially) iPhone automatically changing or not.

After our long slog last weekend we agreed today would be a short, enjoyable, committed pedal incorporating a coffee shop. The latter was to be Little Italy, Haddenham (known to be reliably open at 10am on Sunday mornings). The one hour time target presented a challenge - Haddenham via the direct route is 30 minutes and other routes would take over an hour. Lucky I had 1½ hours to kill - I set to work on some serious route planning.

As a result I am now fully signed up to websites for most riding clubs in the area, can list the ‘moredirt.co.uk’ mountain bike site among my absolute favourites (though more suitable for virile young men) and found bridleways.co.uk to be the most unenlightening resource centre ever with just one route listed for the whole of Aylesbury Vale - The Ridgeway! Despite all my technical know-how and web based wizardry it was a paper Ordnance Survey map that gave me the inspiration so sought – I spotted a bridleway, a new one, never cycled before by us, lurking between the A413 and Haddenham.

Already one Belle down (due to Georgina’s 6th birthday party) at 8am Amber texted to advise of a last minute summons from work. That left Alex and I to check the map, agree the route, and set off on a simple zig-zag through the villages via a road that is pointless by car, yet today would lead us to a short hop on the A413 and onto the ‘new to us’ bridleway. What a find it was too - a wicked good bridleway with ridges, mud, brambles, fallen trees, a river crossed by a narrow bridge, grass track and shingles – perfect all terrain training for the South Downs Way.

We arrived at Little Italy at 10.03, parked our bikes outside and sauntered in for an Americano and Croissant break. Then, suitably refreshed we took a more direct route out of Haddenham to Cuddington and headed home via the Chearsley dog leg. A very enjoyable morning out.

Later in the day, in true Tour de France style, our (new found) positive attitude was suitably rewarded with lashings of Dom Pollignon – another new discovery, this time by Steve, of things that can be done with a sodastream (and a bottle of pinot grigio).

 

Amber - but not Orange!?

Saturday morning saw me defying the undeniable and almost gravitational pull of my bed at 7:00AM. Yes. A-M.. and by 20 to 8 myself and my trusty steed were making our way upto Pollicott to meet my 3 favourite fellow early morning cyclists. I was a little disheartened, as I had built myself a reputation for being eternally loyal to my bright orange Helen & Douglas House t-shirt whilst the others had all been unfaithful opting for warmer attire over the last few rides.. but today I was the one who wasn't sporting the orange as I had been living at Mum's for the past week, catching up with some washing and had left it there!! Oh no!!! Words cannot express how gutted I was when i'd defied my gravitational bed and received a text from Sian explaining that we would be needing our t-shirts for a group photo at the end of the ride! However, I couldn't justify driving to Mum's as it would have cut the ride short..

So, I arrived at the top of Pollicott in my non-orange completely YELLOW high vis jacket. Sian, Alex and Vicky appeared soon after in their lovely H&DH t-shirts (and a few extra layers due to cold!) and Sian explained the route she had in mind.

I have to admit, as always, my first thought was 'oh no, hills!' but we were soon on our way upto Winchendon. With Vicky behind me consistently cheering me on, I made it to the top in my fastest time yet and we then made our way to Cuddington. A quick cross at the A418 (I think!) and a sweet stop.. which is when I had a bright idea. Sian had mentioned that we'd be crossing in Stone to get to Eythrope a little further along the route.. With Mum's house only in Fairford Leys (5 mins from Stone) Could this be the end to my lack of Helen and Douglas House t-shirt? I deployed my iPhone with the intention to speak to Mum and see if she would be able to meet us in Stone with my beloved orange garment... but it soon became apparent that Mum had not been able to drag herself from her own gravitational bed as there was no answer.

We continued on our route and before I knew it we were approaching 'Little Meadle' - this is when I started to panic a bit - Little Meadle? I glanced at Sian who looked just as confused as I did - despite living a few miles away neither of us had EVER heard of it! How bizarre. With all of the major hills out of the way I started to really enjoy the gorgeous weather and was taking in the views! We were passed by two groups of racing cyclists - sleek and lovely with their featherweight bikes, elastic band tyres and streamlined Lycra. Casual, effortless 'good morning's coming our way.. There I was leading our pack with my halfords special mountain bike - tyres fit for a land rover and my not so streamlined hoody, yellow high vis and invisible orange t-shirt. With out of breath, couldreallydowithsomeoxygen 'Hiya's somehow coming out of my mouth.

Another sweet & drink stop in Bishopstone confirmed my thoughts - Mum had infact only just got up and would be in no fit state to meet us in Stone in the 5 minutes we had to get there. So, a little disappointed that a reunion with my t-shirt wasn't meant to be, I continued to take the lead and we arrived in Stone and carried onto Eythrope (which is apparently dog central - have never seen so many dogs and dog walkers in such a short space of time!)

The long and windy slope back upto the Lodge between Upper Winchendon and Waddesdon was a killer on my legs, and I have to confess, I did have to jump off and have a little stroll for a short distance, with Alex not far behind. With Sian and Vicky ready to get going again when we reached the top, we took a nice freewheel down the other side of the hill and came to the Manor crossroads. 10 minutes later we had all tackled the steep downhill muddy track without getting off OR stopping, and I was lucky enough to be very nearly home. The hills back up to Ashendon were sadly on the cards for the others as i'd already cycled them earlier in the morning (mwahahahaha)...

But before they could depart - we still had a photo to take! With only 3 orange t-shirts!! My pining for my lovely t-shirt coupled with the fact that i'd just cycled 20 miles and my legs were about to wobble away from my torso meant that a photo was the LAST thing I wanted. Sian had been clever enough to improvise and had worn her ORANGE high visibility jacket, which I sneakily adopted especially for the photo so that I too, could be orange. My techno-phobe father was handed an iPhone, shown roughly where to poke on the screen to activate the camera and we all posed with our best 'honestly, this is a genuine smile' faces in our orange attire.

After a quick chat, the 3 Belles set off on their way home, whilst me and my legs wobbled our way indoors and got straight into a hot bath., grateful that I lived at the bottom of a hill. Not at the top!

Boots, Belles and Blow...

9am Sunday morning saw we Belles squeezing our booty into Andy's car. We quickly filled it and Alex, Annalise and I squeezed in and headed to the metropolis of Ashendon to tout our wares.

It was raining so we were diverted to the cover of the hut and our car boot sale became a table top sale. Luckily we managed to blag a table!

As we hurried to unpack trading began. Professional buyers hustled for china, jewellery, smellies. We dug through our bags and boxes to satisfy demand and even the hardest booter among them gave us a fair price when we explained that our money today was destined for Helen & Douglas House.

Bargains galore on our stall.

In true Belles style we took the opportunity to enjoy ourselves immensly. We can only apologise to our fellow traders: Pietro for the toilet humour, Louise for leaving x-rated goods on your stall and Jessica for selling your x-rated goods.

We must also beg forgiveness from our customers. 

Isalda sorry for selling you the x-rated goods (and for this photo).

Pam Rand can now set up an art gallery (with Gill) so we are sorry for that and also to Clare for being so blatantly opportunistic. Luke I was totally out of order for telling you Waynes World 2 is a really great film. And we are truly ashamed that we sold Freddo Frogs to children at 3p over market rate.

England Rugby fans we are so not sorry for what we did to Martin Johnson (and on a big match day too).
 

All that puff left me looking like an orange chipmunk but for £3 it was so worth the effort!

Big Up to Vicky, Tans and Andy for the Leek and potato soup which was a welcome follow on to egg/bacon rolls washed down with plenty of coffee and tea. Also thanks to the Ashendon Playing Fields Association for giving us the chance of a fundraiser.

We shut up shop with £126.22 in the bag for Helen & Douglas House and headed home.  The driftwood tree made it home though so please someone make an offer - it's very arty and will look lovely decorated with eggs for Easter, shells for Summer and baubles for Christmas.

Tree needs a home.

Unchained Malady?

My decision to get out of bed on Saturday morning despite a frenetic week scuppered Amber's plans for a quick whizz on the flatlands. I thought she wouldn't notice, when I suggested she meet me at Pollicott, that I had plans to re-route. But she had and at 7.40 am I got a call from Amber - "my chain is rusty and it's slipping" says she, "I'm not sure I can keep going - I might go tomorrow instead..." - I admit to being tempted to go back to bed but somehow I found myself saying "keep pedalling - I have lubes!" (Indeed I do have a wide selection of lubes for all occasions).

And so it was, at 8am on Saturday morning, Amber and I set off to do the hill training 'rollercoaster' route up the hills and down the vales that surround Ashendon. This was not the flat route of Amber's choice but if we can't do hills we will be walking a lot of the South Downs Way and the plan is to cycle it.

At the top of hill number one, Amber was very pale and admitted to being very worried about what was to come on our route. Guilty? me? no... "c'mon" I said, "you can do it". She didn't smile but she did keep going so I took that as a positive sign. We had a nice downhill cruise out of Chearsley with me yabbering away (trying to lighten the mood) and Amber giving me sideways 'I hate you, you are not my friend' looks.

At the end of the long (but not as steep as it feels) cruise up to Chilton I was ahead of Amber and took the opportunity to investigate a bridleway opposite the junction. What an exciting find, I just need to look at the map and I think we have a new route. As I looped back to find Amber she was definitely NOT in the mood to discuss my new found route and (after a short moment of pure joy when Amber realised we had only been cycling 36 minutes) we turned toward Chilton in contemplative silence.

Between Chilton and Dorton the unspoiled views across the Pollicott valley make this part of the ride truly glorious and even Amber managed to agree that it is a marvel to behold.

In Dorton we took the 'up and over railway line' hill in our stride and started the final leg toward Ashendon. This involves the Brick Hill climb (a short and sharp 1:10 hill with a mean little bend at the steepest point). The thing is Amber had already told me she "can't do it". The truth is she has never tried and I was in a meanly determined mood so - my response? You’ve guessed it "yes you can - you just have to believe you can (and get in the right gear)." Amber hhmmpphd at me stood up on her pedals and set off ahead of me toward said hill.

Concerned I may totally kill Amber's enthusiasm I stayed at the rear and despite stopping twice she didn't walk even one step of the way. She stopped, I circled round to stay behind and she set off again - twice. AND before we knew it Amber Ewers had cycled up Brick Hill and didn't even stop at Hill Farm (which is a perfectly acceptable breathing point when needed).

By the time we said our farewells in Ashendon Amber had got her colour back. By the time she was back in Westcott I think she had her smile back AND renewed enthusiasm too. There are moments in this cycle training lark that give me immense satisfaction!

This weekend's training took place in 2 seperate sessions, this is quite normal for us nowadays as busy lives mean we rarely have time to all cycle together and training has to be done so if it means seperate sessions, so be it!!

Saturday's session started at 7am with myself and Sian amazingly keen to get going and with my recently eaten banana releasing its energy we set off. Our route took us right out of Pollicott and up to the crossroads, straight across and down Cannons hill where my already VERY temperamental gears decided to behave even more eratically, my chain kept releasing and re-tensioning all by itself whenever I free-wheeled which alarmed me somewhat, however I decided to just grin and bear it.

Onto Cuddington and then Haddenham and along towards Stone, this normally busy road I had expected to be quiet at about 8am on a Sunday morning, however this was not the case and the speed some of the motorists were going nearly rocked me out of my saddle! Sian was keeping quiet behind me as she was making sure I didn't come a cropper with my dodgy gears!!

Once we got to Stone we headed up to Eythrope and on through the lovely estate, we have not cycled this route for a fair while and I have missed the lovely estate views and scenery, we came to the lodge house at Upper Winchendon where we took 5 for a breather and I produced a penguin bar for us both to tuck into, needless to say it didn't last anywhere near the 5 minutes but with renewed energy we set off over the other side and on towards the manor and Westcott.

Back at Westcott we were on the home straight back up to Ashendon, by which time my gears had decided to sort themselves out and behave!!

16.73 miles, 346 feet climb, 592 calories (minus a penguin!!)

Sunday morning saw myself and Alex meeting at 9am at the Old Forge corner, I am always a few minutes late on Sundays as I do my horse before and ALWAYS underestimate the amount of time it takes!!

We did our Brill, Ludgershall, Wootton, Ashendon route, although we had intended on doing the Dorton, Chilton, Chearsley route but a hectic Saturday afternoon culmonating in a trip to A+E with my youngest had left me physically and emotionally drained so a relatively un-taxing ride was definately in order!! Needless to say said child is fine now!!

We happily cycled and chatted and didn't even notice the time but upon reaching Ashendon we realised we had shaved half an hour off the previous week's time so we headed home to our other halves and a joint full english brunch awaiting us!! (It is totally worth doing ANY training for this!!)

Everyone in the 'HOUSE' a winner...

Despite a lower turnout than we had hoped for, bingo turned out fun again last night and we raised a fabulous £131 for Helen & Douglas House. Huge thanks to Andy and Hilary Dale for allowing us to commandeer Gatehangers, Ashendon and a big up to everyone who came out on a cold night to join in the fun.

Vicky, Alex and Gill mustered up so many raffle prizes that, along with the bingo cash prizes (wooo), virtually everyone in the house was a winner. Only Amber was down on her luck but she gets the special award of a 7am start for training cycle tomorrow to cheer her up!

After his somewhat dodgy bingo calling last time, Andy (landlord) did his background research this time and came up with...hmm...a list of bingo terms from the Internet! They were spurious, but clean! Some tampering of his list during 'half time, drinks time' livened it up - honestly "one fat lady with a fat head" and "fat man snores" were (we thought) truly hilarious compared to "Torquay in Devon" and "saving Grace" (the latter was also tampered with and the strategically placed 'h' almost lost Andy to giggles!).

Our next fundraising event will be the Beautiful Belles Bargain Booth at Ashendon boot sale to be held on the car park at Ashendon Playing Fields 10-2pm, Sunday 12th March - please come and buy - all proceeds will go to Helen & Douglas House.

The Long and Winding Road

Well, as you will no doubt have learned from Sians last blog the next Belles adventure sets off on June 9th – plenty of time for us girls to get into shape and conquer the South Downs!!

You may recall my last training ride was not the happiest, with icy conditions causing me a few problems that I’ve not forgotten, so it was with a little trepidation I entered the weekend with training firmly in my mind. On that occasion events required me to leave my bike down at Amber’s house so, before I could even begin to take on Sundays training, I needed to go and get my bike back.

One of the disadvantages of living out in the sticks is nobody has a pick-up truck when you need one, so 10am Saturday morning Steve and I set off on the two mile walk to Westcott to recover my trusted steed. Despite the cold rain and wind the walk down was easy enough but I was reminded on the way back just how daunting the ‘long and winding road’ up to Ashendon looks like when you’re heading up from the bottom.

When we arrived back Andy was out in the driveway doing the kind of things men do in driveways on Saturday mornings – more to the point a jet washer was conveniently plugged in and ready to go. A quick flutter of the eyelashes and the promise of cold beer from the fridge and “Hey Presto” – my bike looked as good as new. All I needed to do now was repeat the charm on Steve and the bike would be oiled up and ready for Sunday.

Saturday night was never going to offer suitable preparation for Sundays training session – Claire Cooks birthday party down in Cuddington was always going to be a test, particularly as all of the Belles had been invited along with partners who didn’t have to get up and cycle the next day. In the end we all decided that the best thing to do was to take it easy. Whilst it was many months ago we all still remember the wild Saturday night that ended up with a rather hung over cycle the next morning.

The Sunday morning weather seemed to be a great improvement on Saturday as I headed up to meet Vicky on the bench at the top of the hill. Sian and Amber were otherwise engaged today so just the two of us – ‘do we cycle or do we go and sit in the coffee shop for a couple of hours and say we’ve just done fifteen miles?’

We threw the idea round for a while and having decided we’d never get away with it Vicky and I headed off down Dorton Hill towards Ludgershall – meet ‘Wimp’ and ‘Wimp’ the two new Pollicott Belles.

As we began to gather speed and enthusiasm I pointed out two positives to Vicky. Firstly the sun had come out and it was actually feeling quite pleasant, secondly Steve was going to have a Full Monty ready for us when we got back (the English breakfast kind, not the one where he whips off his underpants wearing a police uniform).

Vicky was perhaps even more impressed with the four men I’d managed to accumulate on my way up to meet her, and not just any old four men - men with tales of the South Downs. It turns out these guys had cycled the very route that the Belles were going to take on this coming June – in the words of Chief Brody in the film Jaws “we’re gonna need a bigger bike”.

In no time at all Vicky and I was powering our way back up Dorton Hill. So much power in fact that when we met a sweating, gasping, dehydrated, fellow cyclist at the top who was amazed we’d arrived so cool, calm, and collected – I quietly owned up to having a little walk. Oh well, I tried.

Soon we were back in Pollicott, bikes parked up, boots off, and into the kitchen ready for Steves Full Monty – da da da, da da da da, - what a disappointment, we thought we were getting bacon, eggs, sausage, grilled tomato, and toast.

Now before I go a quick, yet important, reminder – the Pollicott Belles fund raising bingo night is this Thursday 3rd March up at The Gatehangers, hosted courtesy of Andy and Hilary.

Eyes down, look in, and see you Thursday.

Alex

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