The strange little detour on the way back was me going to have a look at why the main road out of the village was closed; it turns out the recent floods had caused the brook alongside the road to rise and wash out the support under the pavement which has completely sagged over a length of about 20 feet! was It was blowy but not too bad and my legs felt great so it was quite a fun ride and 19.6 miles to kick off 2016.
10th January: I could feel a cold creeping up on me today so I decided to take Awesom-O for a spin to try and head it off. I ended up doing the local 21, it was very windy all the way around so not the most fun ride ever but it was 21.2 more miles for January.
17th January: Well, January's not going brilliantly so far. I've had a bad cold for the last week and today, just when I'm feeling a bit more human, I woke up to this!
Not exactly ideal cycling weather but the forecast isn't predicting any more snow and the temperature is supposed to stay a few degrees above zero for the next few days so I'll have to try and have a bit of a catch up.
23rd January: Well, I've not been out for nearly two weeks because I had a bad cold which was followed by a few days of icy weather. Anyhow, the weather's warmed up a bit again so I set out to do the Old coach road today. It was all going great until I left the Old coach Road and got onto the East Lancs - flat front tyre! Sod's law kicked in at this point as I found I had no spare tubes in my rucksack - arse! It was pouring down with rain at this point but I rode until the front tyre was totally flat and stopped to pump it up again. I found it would last about mile between inflations so I made it home eventually. It turned out to be a fragment of glass that had worked it's way into the tyre so it was quickly fixed. Anyhow, 15.0 more miles.
25th January: Had the day off work today but was feeling a bit motivationally challenged so I headed out to do the Old Coach road. It was horrendously windy but very bright and sunny day which was a bit odd. It was a hard ride but at least I didn't get a puncture this time! Anyhow, it was another 15.6 miles for January
31st January: Despite the howling wind (the tail end of storm Gertrude) and pouring rain it was very warm this evening so I decided to head out and do the Old Coach road again. It turned out to be one of those rides that was tough but enjoyable. The rain was blowing completely horizontally through my light beam but it was warm so even though I ended up soaked to the skin with my shoes full of water, it was a very enjoyable ride.
The total for the month was only 86.5 miles which isn't brilliant but I think January is naturally a poor month for cycling, at least it was this year. I got a couple of rides in then had a bad cold for 10 days. This was followed but a few days of very icy weather followed by storm Gertrude so the fates were against me but there's always summer (and Lanzarote!) to look forward to.
