Your best ride of 2018?

[roubaixtuesday]

To get us started, I'll go for Great Dun Fell and Tan Hill Inn.

Britain's highest road and England's highest pub in a day.

A day ride out from Sedburgh on a wonderful sunny June day.

Yours?

[John100]

Has to be Wimps LEJOG. Something that was on my to do list but kept getting shunted to the next year. Glorious weather so camping great, cycling hot and a good group which had come together on the forum. Not forgetting wonderful support team!

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,

To get us started, I'll go for Great Dun Fell and Tan Hill Inn.

Britain's highest road and England's highest pub in a day.

A day ride out from Sedburgh on a wonderful sunny June day.

Yours?

But have you ever been up Fiends Fell?

[chris_suffolk]

Col De L'Iseran - French Alps. 2770m high, and snow on the side of the road - in August!! Amazing views, and fantastic descent, what's not to like?

[mjr]

La Savoureuse 60km but all day and all your meals and some of your drinks for €25. Stunning countryside, welcoming people, police road closures at key points and vintage bikes being led out by a vintage Alfa! I just would have fitted one gear lower than 34" if I'd read the course more closely, instead of walking the last two steeps.

[landsurfer]

WIMPS LEJOG 2018 .... Brothers and Sisters ... the bond will last .... and Riley ...

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Nothing sticks out for 2018.
Stupidly went for a ride along the west country way mtb course..................on a tourer and got lost
Had another go from the other end and abandoned at Dartmoor, then felt better on the way home 164 miles
Oh I did another 165 miles meeting the wimps and got blasted by a chap on a fixed single speed

Next year I plan something I will remember or it will finish me off

Merry Xmas

[Cugel]

We love to put stuff into hierarchies-of-worth, we humans. Is it genetic or cultural. I wonder?

Anyroadup, it's a rare bike ride that I don't enjoy. All the others have various merits on various scales of pleasure. I find myself disinclined to put them into a hierarchy with but one at the top.

There is a danger, do you see, that this habit will spread to, say, eating, whence I might turn into a-one o' them fusspot types who goes on about how they prefer red cabbage to broccoli.... It's but a short step to the fundamental error of deciding that stuff at the bottom of the hierarchy-of-worth in "what I like" is somehow bad, unworthy, to be avoided. Thus one ends up like Darren the teen, who eats only burger from a certain purveyor and drinks only brown toof-rot juice from another.

Cugel

[robing]

This year I did a 10 day solo LEJOG, a 14 day group Channel to Med across France including Mont Ventoux and I've just come back from a Vietnam cycling trip. However, my best ride this year was the first one I did back in May - Lon Las Cymru. It was just superb - great weather, scenery, campsites and a superb route across quiet roads and cycle ways.

[tykeboy2003]

Without doubt it was on 6th July this year in blistering heat when I did my first century ride, from my house in Swadlincote to March in Cambridgeshire (basically using Sustrans route 63). I left home at about 6:05am, arriving in March at 4:41pm (including 30 minutes in Oakham for lunch and an enforced stop of 40 minutes in Leicester to fix a puncture).

[The utility cyclist]

Col De L'Iseran - French Alps. 2770m high, and snow on the side of the road - in August!! Amazing views, and fantastic descent, what's not to like?

Chapeau I was supporting friends doing Raid Alpine last year in August and it was snowing (lightly) as soon as they got to the start of the climb from just outside Val d'Isere, a couple of them were well on their way to hypothermia coming down the other side where it was raining and a cold wind, they only had three more cols to knock off afterwards
Definitely one to put down in the scrap book.

My 'best' ride was actually giving my grandson a 'backie' from his house to a town just 6 miles away so we could go collect his first proper bike. We cycled back the 'long' way (not much further than going tbh), he was so happy with it and was so tired out he slept like a log when he got home. It wasn't a challenging ride for me in the slightest, even the added weight of a 7stone child on the saddle wasn't really difficult as we were pottering, it was the joy that the ride brought to him and getting the bike that made it the best ride of 2018 for me

[roubaixtuesday]

We love to put stuff into hierarchies-of-worth, we humans. Is it genetic or cultural. I wonder?

Anyroadup, it's a rare bike ride that I don't enjoy. All the others have various merits on various scales of pleasure. I find myself disinclined to put them into a hierarchy with but one at the top.

There is a danger, do you see, that this habit will spread to, say, eating, whence I might turn into a-one o' them fusspot types who goes on about how they prefer red cabbage to broccoli.... It's but a short step to the fundamental error of deciding that stuff at the bottom of the hierarchy-of-worth in "what I like" is somehow bad, unworthy, to be avoided. Thus one ends up like Darren the teen, who eats only burger from a certain purveyor and drinks only brown toof-rot juice from another.

Cugel

I fear you may have over- analysed the question a little Mr Cugel.

But no matter, I shall interpret your answer as "all of them", an excellent musing if I might be so bold.

As I have some sympathy with your position, I shall note that my modest 20 flat miles squeezed in at dusk today was also excellent, featuring as it did both deer and mist settling gently into the folds of the countryside while the sun set.

[Cugel]

We love to put stuff into hierarchies-of-worth, we humans. Is it genetic or cultural. I wonder?

Anyroadup, it's a rare bike ride that I don't enjoy. All the others have various merits on various scales of pleasure. I find myself disinclined to put them into a hierarchy with but one at the top.

There is a danger, do you see, that this habit will spread to, say, eating, whence I might turn into a-one o' them fusspot types who goes on about how they prefer red cabbage to broccoli.... It's but a short step to the fundamental error of deciding that stuff at the bottom of the hierarchy-of-worth in "what I like" is somehow bad, unworthy, to be avoided. Thus one ends up like Darren the teen, who eats only burger from a certain purveyor and drinks only brown toof-rot juice from another.

Cugel

I fear you may have over- analysed the question a little Mr Cugel.

But no matter, I shall interpret your answer as "all of them", an excellent musing if I might be so bold.

As I have some sympathy with your position, I shall note that my modest 20 flat miles squeezed in at dusk today was also excellent, featuring as it did both deer and mist settling gently into the folds of the countryside while the sun set.

I'll reciprocate, then, by admitting that some rides do turn out more memorable than others. I recall three this summer when it was hot & dry, with every field full of a blaze of yellow buttercups and other wild flower. The grass too was a bit yellow by then so the the whole landscape seemed to be made of burnished and glittering gold.

This was on rides in the western Dales: Barbondale, Dentdale, Garsdale. Also around Clapham, Austwick, Horton in Ribblesdale, Settle and up into the Bowland Fells. It's normally ultra-green and/or grey around there, as you will know! A change to see it looking like a Nevada desert after heavy rain - full of mostly blazing yellow flowers bathed in brilliant sunshine.

CUgel

[Oldjohnw]

I'll go with Rannoch Station.

[RickH]

Nothing big this year - too much "life is what happens while you're making other plans" (John Lennon).

But I did ride (& rode all the way) to the top of Rivington Pike for the first time in quite a few years (does that count as it was almost entirely off road?). Nearly 30 years ago I used to sometimes do that ride with one of the kids in a seat on the back!

Up Rivington Pike (you can see the bike if you look carefully)

Also explored some new local routes that I hadn't tried before (Despite living in the same house for 35 years). Mostly too long a ride to get to the unknown bits on an MTB & too much of an unknown quantity to want to venture down on a road bike.