I planned to do a long ride today, to take advantage of lovely weather. The wind was coming from the east. Too early in the year and a bit too cold in the extremities of the day for Sutton Bridge and back, but I hoped to do at least 100 miles, depending when I woke up this morning.

I woke up sufficiently early and was pedalling away from the garage door at 0705. The basic idea was to do some variation of the route to Norfolk, but turn back for home somewhere in Lincolnshire.

I made it to the village shop at Buckminster at about 10:30. Stopped and had a feast there. After Buckminster there are two options to go eastward, one route goes directly east from there and the other dips south first. Today I did the lower version. I haven't done this one so often and I missed a turn after Castle Bytham. But that was fine, I was happy to go exploring. After a while I came to a sign for Stamford so I headed in that direction. Well surfaced roads, decently quiet (although it was a Sunday of course).

I went right into Stamford. As it happens one of my brothers lives there, and I did briefly consider paying him an impromptu visit. Then I thought to myself - what would my reaction be, if he did that to me one Sunday? It wouldn't be positive. So I didn't. I turned back at a convenient roundabout. As I made my way back I wasn't 100% sure I was coming back the right way. I'd tried to memorise the turns. Fortunately I got them right.

There's a handy little village shop / cafe at Castle Bytham, but annoyingly it had closed by the time I passed it on the way back. But I found a handy shop at South Witham and bought some more stuff, including a Mars Bar drink. Ideal fuel for the return leg of a long ride.

At Buckminster I turned east again to take an excursion along the "upper" route eastward as far as Colsterworth, just to add a few miles before turning for home.

Came back via Burton on the Wolds and Stanford on Soar. I'd gone through Rempstone and Wymeswold on the outbound leg. I also had a bit of an excursion through Sutton Bonington and Kingston on Soar.



It was a beautifully warm, sunny day. Cool in the morning but I wrapped up decently warm. I'd backpacked my tights and two upper layers and was down to minimal clothing by 1100. Caught the sun on my arms and topped up the tanlines on my legs.

Listened to 6 Music, the first few chapters of Pete Townshend's superb autobiography, read by the man himself and then coverage of the final Premier League games of the season, on 5 Live.

Back on 127.17 miles. Probably should have done more given that I was back more than two hours before sunset, but I limited my options by going to Stamford I think. Lovely day out on a bike anyway and especially nice to do a bit of exploring in that bit of Lincolnshire. Lovely over there.

https://www.strava.com/activities/11450009463

Quote from: David L on Today at 07:52:58 PM30 miles on the road bikes today. Absolutely lovely day for it. However, the ride didn't end too well. Stopped at Lynwoods cafe in Bampton for a sausage roll and a coffee where I removed my cat eye computer to check our average speed. After setting off, I realised I'd not put it back on the bike. Looked everywhere for it back at the cafe but it wasn't to be found. Pissed off.
I've actually located what looks like a used one on Gumtree for £12 so if I can get that it will be an easy fix using the existing sender unit. If not it will have to be a different model.......costing a lot more. Grrrrr!

Which particular Cateye model, David?

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Failure. Two minutes.

Thomas describes himself as middle-aged, but no-one lives to 131.

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Surprised my third go turned out to be the solution. First word I thought of to fit, and I was too idle to try to find something more promising. About a minute.

A beautiful afternoon and I wanted to escape from work at about 1500, and do a fondo. Then someone thoughtfully invited me to a meeting at 1700.

So instead I thought I'd take an extended lunch at about 1300 and do maybe 35 miles or so. A light wind was coming from the east, roughly, so the plan was to do about 18 miles of the eastbound route, then come back.

After about four miles, I entered Loughborough Road as usual, only to find that it had been "resurfaced", if I can dignify what they've done with the term, by having a huge quantity of dusty, sharp gravel piled onto it. I tolerated it for about 150 metres or so then decided to turn back. My tyres were liberally coated in grey dust.

I'll have to avoid Loughborough Road for a while, but fortunately there are other options for that part of the route.

I went west along the Coalville bypass then past Sinope and north through Peggs Green and Griffydam, up Top Brand. Rather than pursue the eastbound route I did a sort of loop through Belton, Long Whatton, Diseworth - just following my nose - and came back down Top Brand. Then west along Alton Hill, to Ashby then Packington, then Normanton Road to Heather, which I don't think I've done for at least two years. Back home via Ibstock, on 37.81 miles, in plenty of time for the meeting.

Really nice out there, warm and sunny. I trialled a pair of cycling shorts in a garish black and green colour scheme that were a Christmas present from Stepdaughter 2. You'd think I'd get a bit of credit for this from her mother but no, she just wanted to point out that they look ridiculous with a black and red cycling top. I suppose I need to buy a new top, I don't really have one that goes with it.

https://www.strava.com/activities/11432305648

Quote from: Slim on April 16, 2024, 07:35:29 PM

Quote from: Slim on March 21, 2024, 03:35:16 PMJust had a call from Vision Express. They've broken my Oakley cycling frames.

Cross-posted that from the "grumpy" thread with happier news. They refused to replace them, but offered a new pair of frames up to £80 in value (ie inferior). After an argument in the store - their manager lied to my face, claiming I'd been told they were likely to break and this would be at my own risk - I gave up and accepted, but I put a powerfully negative review on Trust Pilot.

Their complaints department contacted me to apologise, offered to replace the Oakleys with the original Oakley frames and told me I could keep the ones I'd already accepted as replacements - which actually I quite like. So I've ended up with a free pair of specs.

Just picked up my free Oakleys from Vision Express - very nice! Same as the old ones except black instead of blue / grey.

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2 mins exactly.

I haven't used VNC for a long time, I only ever used it to access Windows systems at work. As a desktop VNC client I used Remmina, worked well enough.

For my own Linux VMs I only use command line (SSH) now but when I did need a GUI environment I used virt-viewer, which is the built-in remote desktop solution for KVM VMs.

There was a really good Linux remote desktop solution that I used to use to login to my home Linux desktop from work in the noughties called NoMachine, https://www.nomachine.com/

Haven't tried it for years but it was really quick and responsive.

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25 seconds. And it still took four goes.

Helped myself to a bit of retro LCD fun. At £8.25 including delivery on eBay, I was half expecting it to be a fake!



_{.. and actually, it is}

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A minute or so.

Showers were forecast for the afternoon at about 1600 but I was keen to add some distance to the May tally, so I resolved to tolerate it. Last time I did that, instead of the light shower I expected, I got rained on for half an hour. This time, I didn't get rained on at all! The sky went ominously dark grey for half an hour at about 1630, but it didn't follow through on its threat.

A bit windy, not quite so warm as of late. I did a Twycrosser, with the added twist that I went east to Kirkby Mallory after Cadeby, to take in the last 12 miles of the return leg of the southbound route.



Back on 41.86. 318 this month now which is more than good enough for half way through May.

https://www.strava.com/activities/11411543098

This is a photo that I took in Wales in March, on the Pembrokeshire coastal path.



The camera (actually a Samsung phone) was only about 20 - 30 metres above sea level when this was taken. But I wondered if I'd be able to see the curve of the horizon if I compressed the pic sideways, like this (image is cropped but shows the whole breadth of the first image):



Although it's tempting to blame the curvature present in the image on lens distortion, I don't think that's the case here. The horizon was actually slightly below the centre of the image, so any barrel distortion would tend to suppress the curve, not exaggerate it. However I have no idea how to do the maths for the degree of curvature you'd expect to see from that elevation. So I suspect that is just an exaggerated view of the Earth's curvature.

Anyone any thoughts?

The "Arsenal Ultras" on a special forces mission:

https://twitter.com/AwayDays_/status/1790260639018918369