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Bike: Roly
Distance: 27 miles

Not as far as I wanted to go but this (and further subsequent rides around Newcastle), was merely a data gathering exercise. I need to find out where the fun roads are and where the not so fun roads are first before doing some decent distances.

So, road down to Whitely Bay, ok. Road along to Blyth, ok. A189, FUCKING NIGHTMARE!!! Imagine a motorway with no lights on it. Then think about riding a bike along it. I turned around at that point, my memory based map not being able to remember any more. Back to Blyth, now it started getting proper fun. The road back to Whitley bay was uphill but smooth and the strong tail wind made it so awesome! I was proper caning it along for about 3 miles at 28mph! Up a hill!!! Brilliant! I passed a couple of blokes on bikes going the same way. YEEEHAAA!

Then on to TyneMouth and North Shields and then turned and headed into Newcastle and completed an ambition of mine to approach the Billy Mill roundabout (see Rogers Profanisaurus for explanation) and then headed for Newcastle. Note to self:- A193 into Newcastle is not a fun road. But after nearly dying 17 times I gave up and headed back to the hotel.

Tomorrow Newcastle town centre and maybe up to the other side of Gateshead for the angel of the north.

Bike: Roly
Distance: 45 miles

My GPS ran out of battery power at some point so the mileage is a low estimate. I’d check with tracklogs or memorymap but my DVD is corrupt for the former (this is the first time I’ve tried to use it since I reinstalled windows 7) and the latter has been offline for a few days now. I reckon it’s more like 55 miles but can;t check will one of the other is working. It was a bit nippy though and had to keep moving fast to keep my warmth up. I bumped into an old chap who I;ve met a few times befroe and we had a long chat this time. Roy is his name, rides an ld Colnago frame with a mixture of assorted old and new kit on it. He’s a very nice bloke, a lot like me in a lot of views he has about cars, people who ride bikes, etc etc so we set the world to rights for about alf an hour until I was freezing and set back off again.

Nice day for it though.

I’ve brought Roly up to Newcastle with me this morning too so it’s an early dart today from work and off up the North East coast to start to get my bearings and ideas of distances and times. My target for the moment is Alnwick becaue I’ve been there a few times before but that looks a bit far for a quick night ride. I reckon I’ll keep riding for about 20 miles and see how far I get and then turn round. It has been a *right* hassle getting the bike and all the kit in the car as well as all my work clothes and things.

Plus I’ve gone and left my videos USB stick in the home computer so I’m going to be a bit bored in the evening. Pants!

Hire car is a Mondeo which is pretty good. Report later.