The next preparation ride we decided to undertake was a single day ride of approximately 250km. This would help us to see what it was like to ride the sort of distances we were planning to be riding every day during the TAW and how we’d manage them. Jack went ahead the night before to camp near Petersfield and I was going to meet him there in the morning. This was in early February and the weather really ended up stealing the show. It had proceeded to start snowing the night before as Jack set off, and it didn’t let up. As I cycled to Waterloo station at 06:30 in the morning, it was really coming down, so much my train was cancelled, and I had to wait for the next one. I eventually made it to Petersfield and met with Jack as we psyched ourselves up for the cold, snowy ride. The first 50km were manageable as we were in sleet most of the time, but after that the snow really started to come down and it was legitimately heavy snow. Things then started to degrade… The tyres we were riding were a new prototype tyre from Schwalbe and they had quite a slick thread (so no grip), so we started struggling. Since the snow had been compacted the night before by cars and then frozen, we couldn’t see what was ahead of our wheels under the fresh falling snow, and we didn’t have the grip to give us confidence to cycle at any speeds. Our gearing systems also started getting clogged up as the snow was deep enough to start getting into it.
So, we soon had to start walking for significant distance at a time, which took a long time in the deep snow and pushing our bikes. Other people were clearly struggling as well, at one point we came across a car which had jack knifed and was blocking the road. Another car was trying to turn around and get up a short hill but wasn’t able to get any traction. So, being the good Samaritans we are, we decided to give her a push. Only we couldn’t get her going, and I ended up getting covered in snow as the lady revved the car too much! Eventually progress became too slow. We were getting cold, we were soaked through, and low on food, so decided to end the ride and rode to the nearest train station which was Newbury. While we didn’t necessarily learn anything from the ride that would help us in the TAW, we did have a lot a of fun and it was quite surreal to ride in the heavy snow.
Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/2117262054
