a hillclimb reconnaisance (and cuddly Daleks)

It’s the Devon Cornwall Police CC Open Hill-climb competition in just over a week. The course rises up from Coverack out on the Lizard, it had been a while since I actually bothered to descend all the way down to the harbour so in the interests of finding out just how painful next Sunday would be a little reconnaisance mission was in order. Friend (and powerful pair of legs) John agreed so we linked up this morning for the 25 mile ride out which inadvertently turned into a two-up timetrial effort, what a great idea – lets hurt ourselves before the climb. The descent down to the waterfront confirmed that yep it was going to be intense. In the interests however of making life harder for ourselves today we figured it would be a great idea to tackle the climb with cold legs after a cafe stop…. cue beeline for The Wave cafe overlooking the harbour and a large cafetiere of good stuff. This is a really nice cafe, and not one I’d been in before, I’ve since added it to the cafe database over on my bikepages site. They only had lemon cream cake on offer, didn’t fancy beans on toast at 10am, but the substitute scones were first class. Anyway, back to the climb, very steep to begin with just to kill the legs off at the start, then a bit less steep for a bit and then merely ’stiff’ for the final km or so. I’ll try not to throw up over my bike at the end next week but it’s going to be a close thing.

Returned home via yet another very long and nasty climb up from the creek at Gweek to Rame… couldn’t help racing up that one either, ‘training’ you know……. a very intense morning yet very fun in a strange masochistic kind of a way… I think cyclists must have a faulty gene that compels them to hurt themselves when really just the cafe bit would be quite nice on it’s own… It would be so much easier just to sit at home and stick knitting needles in my legs before shuffling across the road to the greasy spoon…. nowhere near as much fun tho.

By the way, the light this morning was lovely, it’s been super-humid (though it’s blowing a typical Cornish gale now) and the low morning sun is filtered by the damp haze. Really intensifies the fall colours. OK, not quite the same as when I lived in Quebec but just as beautiful in a subtle kind of way, even just the grasses in the fields.

 

Now for the end bit, it seems to be the done thing in many fine publications to reserve the back side of the very last page for something completely irrelevant and hopefully amusing… so here’s my closing topic for today….. something to occupy you in the coming dark winter evenings – how about Doctor Who’s arch enemies in a nice Shetland yarn…. http://www.entropyhouse.com/penwiper/who/extermaknit.html
I still prefer my teddy.