Big Ben's Travelogue Blog

The 2011 Range Rover Vogue is one of the world’s most revered luxury cars.   They boast a litany of standard equipment designed to cosset driver and passengers alike.   Owners include TV’s Jeremy Clarkson, HM the Queen and me (the rumour is the Queen’s example is somewhat nicer than mine, the recent Jubilee bank holiday weekend giving her the opportunity to replace a knocking anti roll bar link and change the air filter).   The standout feature of the car, or any of the other similar cars we took on the trip is not the electric windows or heated seats but the standard fit waterproof roof.   More of which later. Lovely day for the outdoors Today is the day of the cycle tour, the reason we had come to Holland and for many participants the culmination of many months of gruelling training ahead of the 240km endurance event.   As part of this training some  of the team appear to have read a book suggesting the best preparation for such an event was to minimise sleep as far as possible, it

 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the next in my somewhat infrequent series of travel blogs.  This time I am on a trip to the Netherlands to do some cycling.   Day one started at home with the family in Northampton and a trip out to a cafe for breakfast, nothing noteworthy about that except the breakfast venue was also the place where Jeyes fluid was invented so we knew that that if anyone dropped a sausage the 5 second rule could easily be extended to 10. Leaving a tearful family behind I set off for Cambourne to meet my usual cycling companions to set off for Holland and the Eleven Cities cycle tour .  For those that could not be bothered to click on the link, the eleven cities is an annual event which has run since 1912.  The event sees up to 15,000 cyclists ride 235km around 11 cities in the North West of Holland.  This year the Bullrush Bike Club (and me) would be among their number. Following a pasta dinner prepared by Dan we met the others and formed a convoy to Harwich an

 A 7:07 alarm this morning meant a much more civilised start to the day than the earlier times kept by some of the psychopaths I am travelling with.  Premier Inn breakfast was pretty good, although I would only score it at 7 on 10 due to the poor placement of the sausages which did not enable them to form a breakwater between the beans and the egg.  After a bit of mechanical work swapping wheels around we were ready for an 8:30 depart. Due to the new rules from today we were a bit more careful than previously to separate into groups of no more than six.  I remained with the A-team who were last to depart.  Today's ride to Penzance was a good bit shorter than previous days at only 55 miles ish.  This wasn't good enough for our bunch so we promptly went the wrong way out of the hotel, down a massive hill then back up it when we realised what had happened. I forgot to mention yesterday we passed a comedy club owned by Jethrow the West Country comedian a local legend whose DVDs are

 Today was not really a resounding success for me cycling wise.  The ride started well with a quick wheel swap so I had a straight and true rear wheel and a decent breakfast (Premier Inn if you are reading this, and I know you are, use Tiverton as a model of how to run a hotel.)  We managed to travel a good 500m from the hotel before Padraig got a flat tyre.  All of the A-team were aware of this so once again decided to help a man in distress by f**king off up the road. After ruining a further inner tube whilst trying to fix the first one we were on our way again, straight into the toughest climb of the tour, a brutal 10%+ average gradient.  I attempted to break the gradient down by zig zagging, however even this went wrong when I rode directly into a mud bank, too out of breath to steer my bike. The good news is what goes up must come down, we were rewarded for our climb by a steep descent on a very pot holed and gravel strewn road, adding a fun element of danger to proceedings.  Agai

 My experience at the Swindon Premier Inn was generally unsatisfactory.  I will detail the reasons for this using a management technique called the shit sandwich.  In common with all Premier Inns the bed was very comfortable.  The downsides were no clock in the room and nowhere to plug in your phone near the bed.  The other major problem was contrary to the company's own web site breakfast did not start until 8:00, which was well after our scheduled departure time.  In its place we were given 'breakfast boxes'  they were useless.  The final positive layer in our metaphorical sandwich was the location was handy for the M4. My alarm (on my phone, not the one in the room, that would be impossible) woke me at 6:36AM at which point I opened my breakfast box.  It comprised some instant porridge, a belvita bar, some fruit, some orange juice and the kind of muffin where the plastic wrapper will biodegrade long before its contents.  This would have made a great snack but as a calori

This morning I got up early and left my house at the beautifully palindromic 7:27 in order to ride up the hill to the start line.  Today was when we pointed our bikes West and left Cambourne.  Destination Swindon. The main thing I know about Swindon is the few times I have been there by car it has take f-ing ages.  It turns out it takes even longer by bike.  The route followed a familiar pattern for any Cambourne based cyclists in that it started off with a drop through Caxton then heading out through the Gransdens.  Certainly a well trodden path.  At this point the entire squad of 12 riders were in a big (but socially distanced group) along with a few other club members who were joining us for the ride out. Bullrush Bike Club - Today As we approached the metropolis of Bedford it was decided to split into two smaller rider groups to make it easier to managed traffic and for traffic to manage us.  This proved to be a great idea and we split into the A-team (my team) and some others.  Th