2019 PBP Qualifier #1
Controls: Alfreton, Saundby (Rosie’s), Blacktoft Sands RSPB, Epworth, Bawtry, Shireoaks, Alfreton.
The first audax ride of the season for me and it was an important one – the first in the required SR series necessary to qualify for Paris-Brest-Paris. Over the winter my mate Roffey had decided to join the Audax UK club, so I had some decent company to ride this 200 with. Another work colleague was also riding this 200 and like me has his sights on PBP in August.
Since my last audax ride I had had to strip down my audax bike due to a paint defect in the top tube. The bike had been taken back to Mercian who had agreed to re-finish the bike, however once the paint was stripped from the bike they saw that the top tube had some holes in it! Hence the frame had to have a replacement top tube fitted over Christmas. This all took longer than expected and I was under time pressure to get my bike built up for this first audax. With some help from Roffey and some time in the garage the bike was ready to ride a day or so ahead of the ride, but I had only ridden about 2Km on it to shake it down. Not ideal.
Roffey picked me up early in the morning (about 05:40) and we headed off in the below zero degC ambient temperature. It felt really cold and there had been a snowy snap in the East and Middle of the country, we weren’t too sure what to expect up in Alfreton so we had a lot of kit with us for cold riding. We arrived with a decent buffer of time for faff, loo stops, getting kitted up, packing bags, picking up brevet cards, messing with bikes and more final faffing. I saw Ricki Goode of Four Corners Audax at the start control (I had ridden occasionally with him during the closing stages of last years Yorkshire via Essex 600) so said hi and wished him well. Due to the very cold conditions the organiser had let riders go off when they were ready, as opposed to waiting around for the official 8am start. We were pretty much on 8am in any case, so heading out of the control we picked up our work colleague Paul and the three of us set off.
Seriously cold it was, and for the first 20-30Km we were having to be very tentative as the roads were white with frost and light snow. We picked up a lone rider called Pete after a while and he was happy to ride with us up to the first control at Saundby. Pete asked me if I knew what the first control was like, and I said I had looked at it on Google Earth and it looked like a truckstop cafe on-line, to which he responded; “ah, likley wont get a flat white there then”. Funny. The truckstop was pretty grim, but we had a good feed there in the form of a bacon and sausage bap which went down very well. Once outside the sun was in full glory, glinting off of the wet ice melted roads and the temperature felt as if it had gone down even further. We would have this feeling after every stop on the ride when our body temperature had dropped a little from not pedalling.
The next 40Km were into a very tedious cross headwind, East and then North up alongside the River Trent and through the Isle of Axholme. There was a reasonably large group of VC167 riders ahead of us and they were riding at such a pace which was decent but about 1-2Km/h less than we wanted to ride at, so we passed them and they quickly formed on the back of our wheels. Me and Roffey stayed on the front of the group until the next control at Blacktoft Sands, no one from the group came round us or offered to take up duties at the front. Fair enough we thought, but it was a little surprising to me actually. Our group of 4 stopped for a quick hot drink at the RSPB hut at Blacktoft, all huddled around the big woodburner in the hide, cosy. The group who had been on our wheels just controlled by getting brevet cards stickered and timed and then went onwards to the third control.
Leaving Blacktoft Sands we reversed the route we had come along for some time and then split off West. The wind was on our backs and we had fast riding with occasional sidewinds along to the next control at Epworth, the Tiny TeaPot Cafe. I ate a little too much at this control, I really enjoyed a cold can of Coke and some tomato soup, but I didn’t really need the Victoria Sponge I ordered.
The wind had really started to sap our strength, but we were metering effort pretty well. The fourth control wasn’t too far away, so we headed off for Bawtry which was a free control where we just needed to get a receipt from a shop. It was quite nice actually that the controls were not that far apart, digestible sized chunks of riding were needed on this freezing cold day.
Paul and Pete had taken up the front since leaving the third control at Epworth, so it was nice to be behind a wheel, and myself and Roffey could see that their legs were a bit fresher than ours after we had spent 128Km on the front. We made good progress as a group and were soon on the lookout for the fifth control which was described as Shireoaks Food & Wine. Were it not for the description on the routesheet (on the RHS just over the canal), we would have missed it as the shop name was not as advertised on the routesheet, however the receipt I got did have the Shireoaks Food & Wine naming on it. This was the marker of losing light too, we were riding into dusk from here and we knew it would soon be dark and there were some hills awaiting us ahead of the finish.
Legs were definitely complaining from here on. We had popped Paul around 160Km, the elastic had snapped and we spent some occasional times waiting or slowing up at turns/junctions so we could keep within touching distance. Me and Roffey kept on pushing and Pete was kind of drifting between Paul and us two. As we approached the grounds of Hardwick Hall, which the route took us through, we were presented with a gated road. Gate was open and it seemed to head through the grounds of the hall so, a little unsure we continued on through the grounds, very pleasant but the darkness had fallen by this time, so to orient ourselves around the hall was a little tentative. Once passed the hall we had a very quick and steep descent down to what looked like a very warm and inviting pub – how nice it would have been to pull in there! After the descent, I just remember bloody slogging up hill for ages, it was slow going and the angle of my light was focussed too close in front of my bike and I wasn’t able to adjust it easily (without stopping), so was struggling to see as far as I would ideally have liked to. After some more slog we climbed up to the junction where we would turn left to re-join the outbound route and here the three of us stopped and took 5 minutes for a short stop. We were cooked.
The rest of the ride was pleasant and familiar from earlier in the day, before long we were pulling back into the control at Alfreton to finish up. Brevets cards stamped and handed in, we had a well earned hot coffee, sausage rolls and cakes. They were good, and it was great to be finished, with the first qualifier for PBP 2019 done and under my belt. We didn’t hang around too long before getting back to the car, getting changed and driving the hour and a half south to home. Great ride, which was physically tougher than we all expected, likely due to the very cold conditions and the strong winds.
