Dancing on the pedals

[Pale Rider]

London to Brighton - 16 July

Setting up this thread for those post ride reports we all love reading so much.

I remember when ride reports were mandatory, with painful sanctions if you let everybody else fill up the thread.

Proper, non-clown, bike tonight.

image source

Clown bikes are now a thing? How far out of the loop am I?

Perfect weather, not one mechanical

For those of us who couldn't make it, and haven't been able to since 2019, perfect weather was rubbing it in.

Well that was tremendous fun.

But mechanicals are fun.


Three men and a bike

Once home I shut my eyes for a minute before getting out of my cycling stuff - that turned into three hours.

We've all been there.

Thanks Martin for opening this thread, shall now feel compelled to complete a report.

Just opening a thread compelled you? I have to think the flashbacks had something to do with it.

Well, that was tremendous fun, to borrow a phrase.

A blowout down the hill into Brighton whilst trying to set off the speed camera, with a miraculous crash landing into a mattress that's tumbled out of the truck in front of you. That would be tremendous fun.

Shortly after Balcombe I was surprised to see half of the group scattered along the road in small clusters, all looking east, most with phonecameras held high. It was a good, but not amazing, sunrise however in the far distance I saw the attraction, the Ouse Valley viaduct. A lovely piece of victorian engineering, apparently the second longest viaduct in england and constructed with dutch bricks. Something wrong with english building blocks?

There were not the resources in the UK for the magnitude of brickwork needed. Says this. But wait a minute:

Some sources claim that the 11 million bricks needed for its construction were brought from Holland. This is improbable, although a proportion of those used may have been imported to make up shortfalls from local sources. At that time, clay for brickmaking had to be prepared well in advance of requirements, and the preparation was to some extent dependent on the weather. In addition, other parts of the railway would have demanded enormous quantities of bricks, including Balcombe Tunnel. See also the 1840 report below, which states that 'The bricks, to the number of eleven millions, were made from the adjacent soil.'

Whatever their exact provenance, instagrammers rejoice at the trompe l’œil:

more dancing, please

Looks like it's catching

[close]

Spoiler: no, he doesn't go all the way around