Can I ride a 200km Audax 12 months in a row? Ride #8

One of the things I like about riding a fair way from home is filling your water bottle up and wondering: I wonder if they have nice tap water round here? So October’s learning is: Yeovil doesn’t have nice tap water. 

A calendar event this month, the Wells, Mells and Broader 200km from the Toby Carvery in Whitchurch. Really. Anyway, after a bit of faffing on the start line with phone calls and non-functioning pre-production front lights, we left a few minutes after the rush and so it might as well have been a DIY for the first bit: the usual idiots riding around the South West. Dan didn’t have a whole day to throw at riding so he came along for the first bit and towed us to Evercreech and then it was Iwein and me riding two-up, not for the first time in this series. 

It’s fair to say I didn’t really do my due diligence on looking at the route: it was enough that it started on the day I wanted to go, from quite near my house, and was the right length. Will the organiser is well-known for sticking in plenty of climbs, some unnecessary, and thus it was this day. Harptree Hill onto the Mendips was a lot nicer straight out of the gate than it was on the Butt Buster after about 100km, and then it was pretty lumpy all the way to Bruton before we tackled the climb past Alfred’s Tower up onto Cranborne Chase. I’ve built that up in my head to be a harder climb than it is, but it’s a slog nonetheless. At the top we got chatting to the chaps from Clevedon RC we’d also seen at the Pauline Porter back in June, who were quick to let us know that worse was to come.

The nearly-halfway stop at Yeovil Junction was in a big shed half full of railway signs and half full of Halloween paraphernalia, and it did a good bacon and egg roll. There was an uneventful half hour before Batcombe, the most southerly point, and the hardest climb of the day: the grind up Stile Way to the ridge above the village was more or less the limit of my powers.

We had to tuck into my emergency bag of Pinballs halfway to Mere, but we had company in the form of road.cc reviewer Matt Swaine, and Andy from Audax Club Bristol, and by the time we arrived it was sunny and warm, we were back to the A303 and almost on home turf with not much more than 50km to go. And there was a Co-op, which sold us many, many things.

At some point along this bit I realised we’d been making very good time: not really riding any quicker than normal, but just being efficient with the stops. The last leg didn’t really hold any surprises: the climb back up onto Cranborne Chase is so gradual that the Hammerhead refuses to classify it as a climb even though you’re gaining about 150m of altitude, and then it was down Gare Hill into territory that’s familiar from a hundred weekend morning rides: Trudoxhill, Nunney, Mells, Radstock, Radford, Hunstrete, Woollard, mostly on autopilot. One more chewy climb out of the Chew valley to rinse the last energy out of the legs and then a downhill finish back to the Toby, in less than ten and a half hours, which is quick for me, especially with all the climbing: 2,900m on Iwein’s computer (a Hammerhead Karoo 2) and 3,100m on mine (a Hammerhead Karoo 2).

Eight down, four to go. Certainly the last one I’ll finish in the light. Probably the last one on the Lauf, as I switch to a more metal and mudguardy audax ride for winter. And possibly the last one where my knees will make an appearance…

206km / 3,000m / 10h26