We’ve been blessed with amazing weather lately, considering it’s nearly November. September was a mostly dry month, as was October, and temperatures have been frankly balmy, which has meant we now have some fabulous autumn colours. Riding around the nearby lanes, I vary my journey each day to take in as many views, hills, valleys and bits of bocage as… Read more »
The Adrenaline jacket from Mountain Warehouse is my basic cycling rainproof and one of the first things I bought when I started cycling. Here in Normandy, about the only thing you can really rely on is that it will rain. In winter, pretty much, it will rain every day. Even in the height of summer it’s rare to get three dry… Read more »
This high-vis running jacket and gilet was part of my high-vis splurge from Karrimor. In fact, I didn’t know the gilet was available, but I liked the running jacket so much that when I found it was, I decided to buy it separately. I bought a size 14 in all my Karrimor items, but the running jacket was a little… Read more »
In my search for the perfect cycling jerseys, I’m exploring a number of options, but most of them involve merino, one way or another. Devold is a another Norwegian outdoor clothing company, so one suspects they know a thing or two about staying warm. They’re also a merino specialist. The items I chose were by way of experiment, but also… Read more »
Steve and I changed my tyres yesterday – I’ve swapped out the POS tyres the bike came with for Schwalbe Marathon Pluses. Lined with 5mm of India rubber, Kevlar and with age-resistant side walls, they are as close to bomb-proof as a bike tyre can get and are meant to resist even riding over a drawing pin (we’ll see….). Despite their… Read more »
When we first began cycling, I’d envisaged that my base layer for my top half would be my Eddy tees from Finisterre. I love these things, and have over a dozen. In ultra-fine merino mixed with polyamide, they’re flattering, and perfect for my life of desk work, dog walking, cooking and general outdoor but not too messy stuff (for yard… Read more »
This Ulvang merino training top is one of those test buys I got from SportPursuit, though curiously, because of their very weird delivery system, it’s been one of the first to arrive. A Norwegian brand, it is produced in collaboration with champion skier Vegard Ulvang. The training top is 300gsm, which was the main reason I decided on it. I… Read more »
My Marinac jacket from Lands’ End is something I’ve had for several years but hardly ever worn. When it arrived, I instantly regretted my choice of colour, which is the pale lilac at right (or, as Lands‘ End calls it, ‘Orchid Petal’), not the attractive green in the picture below. I bought it in this colour only because it was on… Read more »
Oh well, it had to happen sometime – I just got my first flat. Of course, I didn’t have any sort of repair kit with me, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. The idea of our rides is that we’ll do them together, so Steve has the repair kit and tools, but… Read more »
It’s great when a plan actually works. We bought bikes in order to exercise the dogs down the voies vertes. Our young sprollie, Cézanne, needs to go further than we want (or have time) to walk. But our old boy, Zola, is never going to be able to run alongside as we cycle, so we needed a trailer for him. And… Read more »
Trish has already posted her review of the Gitane Organ e-bike, and I’ve had mine for less than a week. So this review is really a case of first impressions. I’ll probably write a fuller review when I’ve put some real distance on the bike. When Trish’s bike arrived, a month before mine (grumble, grumble), I was struck by the air… Read more »
Getting the saddle on a bicycle at the perfect height is absolutely critical. This is something I learned decades ago. But I’d forgotten just how much trial and error is involved. Everything starts with getting the correct frame size. I used various online calculators, all of which suggested a frame size of around 58cm. As the largest size available on the… Read more »
Well, I’ve had my new bike for four days now, and I can finally admit to myself that I like it. As excited as I was about getting the bike, I couldn’t rid myself of a lingering doubt that this just wasn’t going to work out. The three rides we made a little while ago on my old Peugeot didn’t… Read more »
So, I found out yesterday that I’ve been riding my bike all wrong since it arrived. The reason? I failed to Read The Fucking Manual. To be honest, I didn’t even know we HAD a manual. But on looking at it last night, Steve found that the reason I’d been feeling that the bike was sluggish lately wasn’t my tyres (which we’d… Read more »
It seems that the Tour de France is coming our way again next year. No doubt we’ll make the same effort to avoid it as we did this year. But if you do fancy getting a taste of the countryside through which the members of the peloton will be flogging themselves stupid, there’s a gentler, more enjoyable way of doing… Read more »
