randonnee
diy 200
The Delightful Dales 200
DIY in WA
Phil Hodgson
John Oakshott
16
Arrivée Spring 2013 No. 120 AU
DAX UK
for stray tanks. Turning up Swaledale and the route was now living up to its name. What a delightful valley. The scenery gets wilder as you climb up the spectacular road from Keld before a white knuckle descent into Nateby. Quite a few of the riders had gathered in the Black Bull for sandwiches and a brew. It’s not often I go into a pub and order tea! No one seemed anxious to leave the warm bar but with the afternoon fading we saddled up and headed south by the River Eden to Garsdale Head. The next big climb of the day reared in front of us: the infamous Coalroad. Rising sharply ahead as you pass under the railway viaduct the road gets its name from the many opencast bellpit coalmines dotted along its route. There was little evidence of them under the blanket of snow which edged the road. Towards the top we were confined to two ribbons of tarmac kindly carved out of the snow by a previous Land Rover. At the summit we paused to take in the wintry view. Nothing moved, apart from a couple of other, similarly obsessed, cyclists. We made a cautious descent past Dent station before another up and over took us to Ribblehead. Our headlong dash down Ribblesdale was briefly interrupted by the Three Peaks café in Horton. We got there just before they closed. We craved cycling food. ‘Have you got any beans?’ we pleaded. ‘No, we’ve just washed the pan out,’ the owner told us, ‘but we have got some puddings left.’ Marvellous! My dairy-free principles went out the window as we tucked into fruit crumble and bread and butter pudding, with lashings of custard. Revitalised, we rode through Settle, pausing only to switch on our lights. I had to ride at the back as Geoff complained that my rear light was searing his eyeballs. A bad move; you can’t see the potholes at the back. Despite my bone-rattling encounter with a black hole we pressed on. There’s something particularly surreal about riding dark country lanes after dusk. With heightened senses it’s a different world, a hypnotic experience as pulsing lights reveal eerie glimpses of the surrounding landscape. Rathmell, Wigglesworth and Sawley passed by, hardly noticed as we cruised down our own wormhole of illumination. A final dash down the A59 and we‘d finished. ** hours, 200km and 3,600m of climb. What a ride … and what a delightful way to spend a Sunday.
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Top of the Coal Road
ith the weather at around 34°C and forecast for Christmas day, two days later, at 39°C, a 27°C day looked right for a 200k audax ride in Perth two days before Christmas. I took a break from my in-depth scientific study of Australian beach life and planned a diy gps ride to audax specification to complete with my son. I’d borrow his road bike, he wanted to give it a go on his Cervelo P3 TT bike. Audax Australia has a few calendar rides organised by Western Australia but the last 200 ride of the year was on 1st December, my son’s wedding day – the reason why we’re here and not really a goer. There are some permanent routes, viewable on Bikely.com, but the rules in Oz are slightly different to those in UK. Because there are no cafés or businesses in the outback at control points where a rider can get a receipt to prove the ride, diy by gps seems usual and because of the ease of getting totally lost here, longdistance and off-road riders routinely use gps. Riders’ diy routes are loaded onto Bikely.com, and appear not to need the turning-point controls required by AUK perhaps because turns may be isolated junctions with no distinguishing points. Audax WA also doesn’t allow temporary membership for permanents, so our ride had to be done through AUK validation to contribute to my rrty. My thanks here to Paul Stewart, SE rides co-ordinator for his guidance.
Near the top of Park Rash
Top of Park Rash
Thin ozone level
Phil Hodgson and Richard Leonard
Photos: Geoff Read
T
he snow settling on the road as we drove through Todmorden was an ominous forewarning of what might lay ahead. It was 6.30 am on a dismal March morning. The endless winter of 2013 still held sway as Geoff drove Richard and myself to Pendleton village hall, the starting point of our first 200km Audax ride of the year. We shivered on the car park as flurries of snow blew in from the north-east. Andy, the organiser, seemed unperturbed. ‘What do you reckon?’ someone asked him. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he replied, ‘if it gets really bad you can always turn round and cycle back.’ His response summed up the essence of Audax long distance cycling. Self-reliance. A brew at the start and off you go; no signs, no manned checkpoints, no feed stations, no support, no rescue. Just how we like it. Departing at 7.30am we rode north through the puddles accumulating at the edge of the A59. Sleet turned to snow but the roads stayed clear. On country lanes a fast pace saw us overtaking some of the other 25 riders as we passed through Gargrave and Cracoe. The first and biggest climb of the day started in Kettlewell. The notorious Park Rash. ‘Steep’ fails to describe its relentless gain in height. A beast of a climb; probably the steepest in the Dales at 1-in-3, and made much harder for the last 500m of climb by the snow covering the tarmac. We slithered on, skinny road tyres spinning alarmingly as they lost traction. Somehow we managed to ride to the summit cattlegrid. Sheltering from the wind behind a signpost we watched as other riders battled up, some riding, some pushing. We were in a winter wonderland with a good 10cm of snow on the road and whiteout conditions. ‘Where’s the road?’ someone asked. We pootled tentatively down the shallow incline on the other side of the pass, one foot unclipped ready for the sideways slides of backwheels on the odd icy patch. As the road steepened we got off and jogged down, pushing the bikes through the powder. At last, black tarmac showed through, and off we rode again in an exhilarating swoop down Coverdale to our first café stop at Middleham. Refreshed by tea and bacon butties, and now riding in sunshine, we rode past the artillery range over to Reeth. With red warning flags flapping furiously in the stiff breeze we kept a wary eye out
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Modifying one of the Bikely routes, I planned for a ride in the coastal plain, total climbing negligible and highest on the bridges over freeways and the Swan River in Perth. The sun is powerful – thin ozone layer – and the air is dry so hydration is a continual concern, but a bigger concern is that nothing marks junctions in the route. The route card would be of the order of: ‘Kwinana cycle route south straight on for 64k, turn left at jarrah tree onto unnamed road, straight on for 36k’. I planned for 200k of this; we finished up taking back-road waterside options and riding 241k. A difficulty with planning routes in the UK to ride here is that many country roads are red dirt, or partly sealed for some distance, then unsealed further on. Regularly graded, dirt roads are good to
drive, useless for two narrow tyres, and if not annually graded they build boneshaking corrugations which aren’t much fun for anyone other than 4x4 salesmen. So planning needs reliably accurate information from maps or internet mapping in order to avoid mistakes.
Dirt road
Once on the dirt road, it can be miles to retrace or push on in the hope of improvement. On the other hand, sealed road surfaces are excellent, there are good networks around towns and they are really enjoyable to ride. Traffic can be heavy on freeways, but seems much lighter on backroads than in the UK, and because bends in the road are more open and occur less frequently than at home in East Anglia, good visibility makes it feel safe to ride. That being said, I’ve seen more roadside shrines to late road users in one drive down the Albany highway than I’d expect to see in a year at home, and enough kangaroad kill to feed the starving millions my dad used to bang on about. Perth is cycling-friendly. A network of cycle/foot paths, planned with rail and road, made riding to the route’s start through the city a doddle; around 15 minutes to cross the city centre. My hopes for proper cycling provision in the UK are fading, but dual-use paths isolated from the traffic do still bring some problems. I reckon that stress in driving arises in part from varying traffic speeds – some moving at 50 and others at 80mph on the same stretch of road. Something similar seems to apply on dedicated dual use paths and I found I was concentrating hard on a four-foot wide path to avoid runners, dog walkers, sit-up-and-begs and hammer-down riders, particularly when overtaking meant moving into the on-coming stream. Helmets are compulsory here. The other issue is where riders move into traffic from the relatively safe dedicated path. We enter the traffic suddenly at a sharp angle, drivers may not be expecting cyclists to join them and it can generate steam all round. Starting from Canning Bridge there is a cycle route parallel to the Kwinana Freeway south out of the city for 90k, pothole free and smoothly surfaced – the tar doesn’t melt at 40°+C – all the way, with water taps along the route. Then we were out in the country: open wooded farmland with broom in flower at this
'Once on the dirt road, it can be miles to retrace or push on in the hope of improvement.'
time, some of the more than 700 species of eucalyptus, grass trees, lizards, snakes, rustling in the undergrowth on all sides and shouts of encouragement, I think, from the few professors in mandatory worn out pick-ups. After the freeway path we headed east on hot, deserted roads to Pinjarra, a former mining town, now the dormitory for the Alcoa bauxite mining operations – of which there are no visible signs to mar the landscape. Turning on to the Old Bunbury Road we headed south-east to the tip of the Peel Inlet, a beautiful shallow saline stretch of water surrounded by speedboats, jet skis and barbies. We turned up to Mandurah at the bottom end of Peel Inlet through estates of mansions, heading north into the sun. WA is incredibly wealthy from mining, and the rate of sterling exchange crippling; the equivalent of £30 for two club sandwiches and coffee about the average rate for the mid-ride breakette. Back up the coast with the Fremantle Doctor, southerly force five, helping all the way. The lack of need to follow a route sheet or deviate from ‘straight on’ makes each kilometre seem longer, but we made the route in good time. Before the last 10k my son said ‘see you at home’ cranking up to 45kph at the end of 230k on his TT bike. I dragged in with the usual aches and pains, my son with no apparent wear and tear, ready for a ‘recreational’ ride this morning. What it is to be 33 years old and living here. Back to the beach study tomorrow.
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www.audax.uk.net Arrivée Spring 2013 No. 120
17 AU
DAX UK