Training trip to Wareham

We left around 11am on Monday morning, after the rain and had decided to do a ride of about 70 miles, so we thought we would head towards Weymouth via the New Forest. Well we had only got near Fawley when I looked behind me to see if Fr Michael was still there - he wasn't!! I turned round and after a while I met him walking towards me, with puncture No 1.

Well the second time I didn't need to look behind me to know there was something wrong and it was a good job we had got near Lymington otherwise we could have evacuated Fawley! because the explosion from his rear wheel nearly blew my hat off! This time puncture No 2 was a long split in the inner tube that would not repair and also the tyre didn't look too good either, so I left him by the side of the road with the horses for company and cycled off to Lymington to get a new tyre and inner tube. I got a taxi from the station and met Fr. walking down the road. We fixed the wheel whilst the taxi driver waited and he then took me back to the station and my bike, whilst Fr Michael cycled back into Lymington to meet me to resume our journey.

We cycled into Boscombe and down to the beach road which we followed into Bournemouth and then took the cycle paths into Poole.

We made it to the chain ferry that goes from Sandbanks to Studland for some well earned rest, well all 5 minutes of it! but Fr. Michael took full advantage of the opportunity!

Puncture No 3 occurred as we were cycling towards Wareham, but this time it was me! But I got lucky because I had bought an inner tube that was supposed to be puncture proof and it was in my front wheel. I had at first forgot about it being there at all until I looked down at my front wheel and could see a bright green gel being thrown out. This was the stuff in the inner tube that was coming out and sealing the hole, and as I write this now the tyre is still up.

Anyway we had completed 68 miles by the time we had got to Wareham and it was starting to get late so we decided to call it a day and got the 7:28 train home. The train didn't stop at Eastleigh so we had to cycle back from the Airport Station, that was nearly 2 miles so we made the 70 miles after all!