I’m back in the UK and decided to take the bike out for a ride around Exeter and into the surrounding countryside. After pushing into the moors yesterday, today was more of a relaxed one.
Classic UK weather showed up of course, so yeah, there’s a bit of rain. #fyp #sworks #cycling #exetercity #devon #cycling #uk #rain
I don’t know how this is going to pan out. However, just thought I’d give you a quick tour of my Thank you. new sort of sighting area here in Exa. So, this is the city center and like every center, it’s absolutely carnage. Uh, I actually want to shout out the mechanics in uh Qatar who adjusted my seat back position and my saddle height. And yesterday I was riding around with my saddle 2 cm too high and uh my seat back was actually 1.5 cm to uh to rear. So that was quite Um, this is going to be quite choppy. I’m probably going to just pick back up when I’m tanking it with the tailwind on the way back on the coastal path. But what I’ll do is I will film just coming through the city center here. Devastating cuz it actually decreases your average speed by quite a lot. Uh, as you can see, it’s a busy Sunday here in Exat. I’m not entirely sure how much you want me to film or what you’d like. If you’d like to do a review on my bike, I’m more than happy to do that. However, I’m conscious. I don’t want to get robbed as well. So, uh quite keen to keep that keep that a secret. But if it’s something that you’d be interested in, let me know. And what I am going to do is pause it these red lights and I’ll pick back up later on. So, I think we made it out of the city. Now, this is sort of uncharted territory. So, I’ve never never actually been down here before that I can remember anyway or almost certainly not on a bike. So, I actually grew up in a town just down the road called Talkie. So, let’s give it some beans down here. I hope this uh fluffy thing I’ve got on the microphone as well is uh is picking up the uh picking up my uh my voice. If it’s not, then I need to go back to the drawing board there. But we’re going to navigate a pretty tricky sort of roundabout/ junction down here, which is hard enough on a car. Sorry, in a car. I’m about to nip it on a bike. So, all right, we’re clear, right? Happy. All right, let’s get around here. I’m hoping that this will take me straight onto the canal path. One thing, like this is only my second ride here in Exa. And uh the traffic lights are absolutely brutal. This seems to be a red light every 100 m, but it’s all good. And actually, I know where we are. All right. And if you’re watching this, Jack Don, if you got any little commas around here, mate, I’m coming for them. Yeah, I know where we are, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen. All right, let’s uh It’s just started raining as well. It’s the UK summer, which is good. I’m turning left here. Yeah, it’s on Amber. Happy with that. And let’s go. So, I actually used to live down here in 200 Nice dog. Um, I used to live down here in 2014, I think it was. Uh, I was on a job for 2 years in exit and uh, yeah, I think we’re just going to go past it now, actually. So, I used to live just just here in these uh in these flats. And I’ve actually gone the wrong way as well. So, that’s handy. Um I need to get onto the foot path. I think I can get down here. A little a little shimmy down here. Up and over. Hey, mate. And then we’re going to go down and cycle route along the key. So, this is Exit Key. Um, today’s going to be quite a chill ride. I if I’m being honest, I went out yesterday and uh went a bit too hard. Um, and I actually woke up at maybe 2:00 in the morning and just went upstairs and slammed like three pieces of plain bread, which is absolutely diabolical behavior, but we’re good. So, yeah, this is Exodus Key. It’s actually quite nice. Um there’s a myriad of uh cafes and restaurants and it just follows all the way along as you can as you can might sorry as you might be able to hear hopefully shortly I’ll bang a tailwind on the way back. Uh so my plan is to ride to Timoth which is about I don’t know 22 km down here. So, we’ll see. But let’s see what happens. Um, yeah. I mean, you’ve seen what this looks like now. Seagulls and stuff. Let’s let’s pick back up with you when I get a little further down. And actually, what’s quite nice is that if you can see in the distance there, uh, the rain. So, um, that’s that’s good. So, I’m going to ride straight into this rain. Um, I checked the the weather actually before I left and I didn’t particularly believe that it would rain. Uh, which it absolutely is. So that’s handy. So this is this is a cycle path route 34 and then it will go all the way along all the way along all the way down. I think it goes all the way to Yeah. not to but definitely to Timmouth which is quite cool. really exciting. And um excuse me. I’ll just nip through that. Thank you. And uh yeah, we’ll just we’ll just get get some get going in a minute. Right. I’ll pick back up with you later on. Give you a little little tour of path actually. And uh look, I’m not going to try and lie. Obviously, I’ve lived in Qatar for 2 and 1/2 years. I haven’t ridden in the rain and this is my first time riding in the rain for for the longest time and it kind of sucks. Um, but in the wise words of Thomas Bidcock, we’re not made of sugar. So that’s quite nice. Cheers, mate. What’s quite cool is I don’t know if you can see it on the camera, but there’s people out doing cracking fears, riding a bike in the water, doing, you know, kayaking and stuff like that if that’s what you’re into. Um, it’s pretty cool. And I think I’m right in the middle of this sort of raincloud, so to speak, at the moment, but I’m hoping it’ll clear up, but we’ll see. And uh I mean it’s not it’s not looking good, is it? But it’s it’s looking grayer. And there’s a there’s a high chance I’m going to stop under a tree. But it’s a stherly wind today. And uh let’s see if I can get under this under under this uh tree. And good, boys. Cheers, lads. And uh we’ll get going. But I mean, it’s looking clear left and right, but I’m not going to stop here. I’ll just crack on, lads. We’ll just we’ll just get going. I think this will pass. And the nice thing is I’ve got a nice strong headwind here. So, the further I ride, I’m going to be rewarded with a a beautiful tailwind all the way back, which hopefully should increase my average a little bit, but let’s see. Do you know what? I almost packed my rain jacket as well, and I thought I’ll be all right. That’s clearly not the case. Right, back over you later. Right, so we’re in. I’m in the eye of the storm. so to speak. And uh there’s no real turning back from here, so I might as well just crack on. Could be tempted just to stay under the trees, but we’ll just get it done. Uh it looks like it’s clearing up. I’ll be honest. If I get to star cross and it isn’t, then there’s a high chance I might suck it and uh and head back cuz it’s not particularly fun uh in any sense of the word. Um especially when I’m a little bit unprepared, but you know what? It’s looking good. Let’s just persevere. Like they say in any race, just keep pedaling and hopefully it comes right. So, I guess we’ll just keep pedaling. Disregard my other comment there. You see, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of people just walking around and stuff. It’s quite nice. And I think this is like a heritage area. Like you get all sorts of like birds or whatnot inside here and like uh yeah, different kinds of wildlife. I’m not, you know, I’m not David Atenburgh, so I don’t really know. Right. Anyway, enough waffling. Catch back up you later. So, it was at this point where my microphone disconnected from my camera. So, the audio quality is pretty bad, as well as the weather as well. You can see it took a turn for the worse. Um, however, I did have a stalking tailwind here, but I was mindful of the covered potholes which were obviously underwater right now and there there is quite a few along this coastal path. Um, you can see there’s still some people out uh riding on the on the path itself which was nice. Um, I did have a little an attempt at a segment here and it’s roughly uh 10 to 12 minutes I think it was. Um, and I haven’t got my Straa stats here, but obviously there’s so many strong cyclists in ex. And obviously this is a popular route for people who have TT bikes as well. So, you know, I already knew that I wasn’t going to get the uh the K here, but I thought I’d have a bash anyway. And I improved my time by like 45 seconds from previous attempts, which is quite nice. But again, you know, it’s it’s quite a cheat as I had a uh had a really strong tailwind. But I think on average I I think I averaged like 39k an hour. Average power was like 310 watt potentially without looking at driver. Uh which is quite nice. But I will say that I did upgrade my bike before I came back to the UK. So I’ve got a 5440 chain ring on it at the moment which I thought would be quite hard to turn in the UK. Um but actually The 40 to small chain ring itself is uh super helpful, especially when you’re uh spinning up climbs and you’ve got that. And then I don’t know the the gear ratios. I’m not a mechanic, but it just seems to work a lot better than the old um 36. But what I’ll do now is I’ll stop waffling along and I’ll just speed this up a little bit. Um as you know, it’s just me riding in the rain. Come on. Come on. Something Can’t wait. 4 hour 2020. Okay. Back up. Bye. Bye. Okay, so we’re back. I’m hoping that the last time it didn’t cut off the uh the microphone cuz I think it did. But if not, we’ll just add this one in. So, we got a little segy along here somewhere. But we got a stoning tailwind. But thing is it’s heavily heavily trafficked by people. So we see how we get on. There’s a few twists and turns, but we’re doing all right. So we’re at 40 44k an hour, 365 W. Heart rate 140 and rising. Deadly. Getting on here. Little pod down to the bridge here. It’s up and over stills 365. Easing up a bit. Little dog. Little doggger. Yeah. And we’re away. Yeah. This isn’t a place for a segy. And then I think we will probably just call it a day there because you see there’s a lot of people left and right and last thing I want is to come off. It’s annoying enough to have a boys in a absolute world of their own hood up eating an ice cream which probably doesn’t sound like a bad idea to be honest. Want to mind a little Mr. Whippy now. And the rain started again. Uh, it’s been quite grim to be honest and I know it’s only a bit of rain, but man, like it’s my first time riding in this for a long time, so I can’t can’t say I’ve enjoyed it. What I will do is I’ll give a little recap when I get home and to meet you then. So, I made it in. It’s actually heavens have opened again. Um, take this off. So yeah, obviously if anybody’s unaware, I’ve never really mentioned my job, but it’s obviously, yeah, you’ve guessed it now. Um, that was my first ride back in the UK in the rain. Didn’t enjoy it. Um, white socks and white shoes are now brown socks and brown shoes, which is good. I’m going to have to clean my bike, which is what it is. But that being said, it was good and it was good to get out and um see how the adjustments I made on the on the bike were which were the seat the sorry the saddle height and the and the uh the layback which is now perfect. So pretty happy. But yeah, hope you enjoyed the footage and if you want anything else, let me know. Just