55 is just too far..

So the weekend came and it was time to get back on the bike.  Where to this time?  We have been out from (or back to) Canterbury in nearly every direction except  towards Dover and Folkestone.  The main reason for this is the huge hill if you get as far as the Elham valley.  So far the only time I have made it to the top without getting off and pushing was on the back of the tandem.  So purely in an effort to avoid that we went to Dover, along the coast to Deal and Sandwich and then back into Canterbury.  We didn't really bother to check the route too carefully as it was all on cycle routes so we weren't likely to get lost and we had the maps with us. It was all territory we had cycled in the past, but never in one hit.


The ride to Dover was fun.  We stopped to help a couple in the car who were lost.  The going got a bit tough where they had resurfaced large chunks of the road and there was lots of gravel.  Once at Dover we stopped at Langdon Cliffs for a sarnie and a break.  The cycle path goes through the National trust property at the point it climbs the face  of the cliffs and they have kindly put in kissing gates  up the face just to make it more fun.  fortunately they were just big enough to back the tandem into before swinging the gate round.  We also had some gear changing woe as we went up the hill as the rear chain stop screw had worked its way loose.  An easy fix though.    


Whilst on the route from Dover to Deal it became apparent as we passed one of the ornate sign posts of National Cycle Route 1 that we had 1196 miles to go to Inverness, ho ho we joked, till we spotted underneath that Canterbury 21 miles.  We had already completed 32 miles and  not to be 2/3 of the way round was a bit depressing.  The little niggles that set in at about 35 miles don't really matter if home is another 5 miles away suddenly seem more important when there is more than double that to go. Add to that the head wind that you get along any seafront and it seemed a long drag into Sandwich, especially when it started raining. We rewarded ourselves with a bag of tasty chips and sat in the market square, along with a selection of loud mouthed chavs and free bus pass users who were waiting for the bus back to Canterbury.  Selfishly we didn't share our chips.


The ride back form Sandwich was hard.  The wind hadn't dropped that much when we came in land and by this point my thighs were begining to complain properly.  We had to stop again to give my legs a rest before we got home.  The cycle route heads down into Fordwich and then offroad along the cycle path up and over a hill before reaching Canterbury. We felt that our legs wouldn't make it and headed along the Stodmarsh Road and back into Canterbury down St Martins Hill. From the garage it was a race to see who would make it into the bath first.


I didn't feel too bad the next day and even made it to my 9.30 yoga class, Ed was not so lucky.