Well, a bright sunny day in London today and it marked the London Cycling Campaign’s Big Ride. This ride is a, I guess, a protest ride drawing attention to the fact that London cyclists would like more room for cycling. Whilst I don’t agree with all that the LCC want (some of it is beyond what could sensibly be done, other than shutting traffic out of London completely), but I still think it’s important to support them (CTC of which I am a member is also supporting the Space for Cycling campaign as well, as it’s now a nationwide movement) as I would love to see some well thought out changes to cycling in London.

So Monday was a Bank Holiday in the UK which meant I was off work. I wanted to do a ride but wasn’t sure what to do as I wanted something reasonably long. Turns out you can plan a ride within 30 minutes on RideWithGPS and set off and go! I’d been wanting to do a London to Cambridge route for a while now - don’t ask me why, but it seems to be one of those rides you have to do if you live in London (the other being London to Brighton).

Dropbox is a fantastic service for syncing documents. In fact, some form of digital syncing is now pretty much built into my workflow that I struggle to use an electronic device with out it! It allows me to keep my eBooks up to date (thanks to Calibre), allows me to sync my Zotero library of academic papers and generally keep my laptop and desktop in sync. However, whilst Dropbox works amazingly at home, perhaps understandably there are times where it’s blocked.

So today I ended up going for a ride and aborted it early. Partly due to the fact that I’m still a bit saddle sore from last weekend - the Brompton turns out is pretty decent (I’ve used it for about 60Km a ride before, see the data for the London Classic and the LBC ride, the Thames Triple Chaser). These rides were fine and the saddle performed fine. However, over the distance I rode last weekend and the partly gravelly nature of the route (I think), the saddle did end up causing some chafing and discomfort.

Well, this weekend I managed to get a ride in that I’d had in my mind for a while since I’d considered doing bike touring - that is a ride from Loughborough to London. It all came about one day one of my friends jokingly suggested that I should cycle to one of the LAN’s I go to with the Loughborough Computer Societyy. Well this got me thinking and I thought I’d have a good look at what would be entailed to do so.

So it’s not been long since I’ve had my Brompton - it arrived in February. However, I’ve already managed to add another one to my collection! We Love Bromptons! had a 2012 Blue P6R model up for sale recently at a decent price so I ended up getting it. It wasn’t my initial plan to do so - I had been planning on touring on my hybrid this year but then when my house deal fell through, I had to move into rented accommodation quickly and wasn’t able to get anywhere where I could store a full size bike.

Went for my second ride with the London Brompton Club today. Was a fairly long ride, the Thames Triple Chase - 25 miles or so from Central London out to Stratford, West Ham and then down across the river on the Woolwich ferry, down to the O2 and across on the cable car and then heading back towards London before crossing over finally into the Greenwich foot tunnel. Well attended ride!

Ok, so not strictly cycling related but it is general health, so I guess this can go here really! Fitness Bands So I’m probably guilty of falling for marketing hype and getting some of the fitness devices. A few months back I’d purchased one of the body fat scales that’s also wi-fi enabled and records my weight (Fitbit Aria). Much to the amusement of my work colleagues! Once I got that, I’d been considering a pedometer.

This weekend saw me get out for a fairly short ride on the Brompton as I’m in the middle of moving house so couldn’t get out on Saturday and on Sunday, I only managed a quick ride before going to see a friend (though I did squeeze in some extra Km’s by having to cycle to the nearest tube station, rather than my local railway station as the trains are down for engineering works).

So it seems like spring has finally come to the UK and that the sun has been shining all weekend. It’s made for some fantastic riding conditions. Certainly makes a change from earlier in the year! Remember the Creepy Tunnel Ride? Well, it’s looking a bit different down there now. The water levels dropped so no getting my feet wet this time around around! The lights were working this time around as well.