DIY Sodding Chipbury with added flooding

Ride Details

• Date Ridden - Friday 16 February 2024
• Event Type - DIY (Mandatory)
• Points Distance - 200

Ride Stats

• Distance - 212 km
• Time - 10h21m13s
• Elapsed time - 11h42m18s
• Avg Speed - 20.4 km/h
• Elevation - 1902 metres
• Bike - Sabbath September AR-1

Ride Notes

This month’s ride was partly a planning ride for something later in the year - to that end the route started from Burnham-on-sea jetty, so I rode in early to miss the commuter traffic.

The weather was grey with a fine drizzle and a stronger than expected westerly - this helped once I got going but the rain was not so nice. There was a lot of standing water and mucky stuff as I headed to Bristol - indeed there was a tanker in a ditch (he’d tried to negotiate the narrow lane and got stuck) near Brockley and avoiding the bigger puddles caused a view issues.

After Long Ashton and Clifton the road was closed just before Blaise Castle, so I had to walk on the footpath - with more standing water between Hallen and Almondsbury things were a little sketchy. The run into Chipping Sodbury where I planned to stop for coffee was a bit crap - I won’t be using that route. Indeed, I probably won’t go to CS at all on the longer ride as the only coffee stop where the bike is ‘safe’ (Coffee No1) was rammed and there aren’t any other options AFAICT. I pressed on to the cycle path and stopped at Bitton - ooops…. half term….. too many annoying kids! But the break was welcome.

As per Chalke and Cheese last month, the Tunnels were closed because of flooding so I climbed up the main road and back down into Midford to pick up the path to Wellow. By now the westerly had strengthened and it became a bit of a slog to Radstock. Feeling knackered I decided to stop in Mells even though I’d only done another 40km from the previous stop. The coffee and cake was very nice and I headed out into the wind again.

The run to Oakhill and Shepton was initially horrible, then great once I was going down hill, and I blasted down the main road into Wells powered by the coffee and sugar hit. From there I looped to the Poldens and, mercifully, the wind eased for the run back into Burnham and a lovely sunset on the Brue cycle path.