Last weekend saw a group of riders including one of my UKCycleChat colleagues take on wlondoncycling’s ‘The One’, and in honour of them completing this awesome challenge, I thought I would write a quick ride story from my attempt to conquer this beast of a route from a couple of months back.
First things first, what is ‘The One’? Well put simply it’s a near sixty mile ride through the surrey hills aiming to hit all of the noteworthy climbs in the area and tops out at nearly 7000ft of climbing.
A few weeks ago saw myself and a fellow Roly head to the south coast at silly o clock on a Sunday morning to catch a ferry to the Isle of Wight for the annual Isle of Wight Randonnee.
And boy we weren’t alone!!
On arriving at the ferry terminal to purchase our tickets we were greeted with a sea of lycra clad men and women in various shades of garish outfits also waiting to board and undertake this challenge. Once on the ferry you couldn’t move for cyclists and as for trying to get a much needed coffee, well you were waiting longer than Team Sky have been waiting for a monument win (though as with Team Sky we did get one eventually)!!
It is with great regularity that I have recently found myself quoting the head of family Stark (before he lost his) from George R. R. Martins rather long (yet unmissable) Game of Thrones. Whether I am complaining to Mrs Rouleur about my dire need to turn the radiators on (it is October after all), or standing in the shower shivering more than the kingdom of Arendelle when Elsa went ‘nucking futs’ in Disney’s Frozen, I continue to repeat the mantra ‘Winter is coming’, and so it felt this weekend.
With Mrs Rouleur deep in to the write up stages of her PhD thesis it means that for the last couple of weekends it has been quite tough to find any real time to get out on the bike for more than my daily commute 1 mile to the train station and back.
However this past weekend was proof that every cloud has a silver lining. The 5am wake up from my son (the future rainbow jersey) constituted ‘The Cloud’. ‘The silver lining’, I could squeeze in a ride before a depressingly small and healthy bowl of muesli (aka dust with raisins).
The Roly Rouleur 