Sunday 1 February 2015

Cheap Bike in the Chilterns (again!)

Mermaid up near the cafe in Wendover Woods on my first decent ride of the year.
Finally found the time to take Mermaid up into the Chilterns for the first time this year.
Last weekend it was my tax return that took up my time, the weekend before that it was IT issues (resulting from the BIOS upgrade I did to the mobo - the success of my work is demostrated by the fact that I am using that very computer to write this!)
No excuses this time, though, and off I went:
Up the "short" route, past Green Park, then through Wendover Woods to the cafe.
Just a quick loop up to the point where the "old" A41 crosses the "new" A41, then home again.

The elevation chart for the ride - the highest point is 277m, up near the cafe.


A nice tailwind to blow me out of Aylesbury, and then up past Green Park. This is the route with the traffic lights over the narrow bridgem and is steeper and shorter than the London Road route. After the first steep section of the "main hill", I turned off just before the golf course (on a slope like that, the layout of the holes must be "interesting"!) I turned right into the Forestry Commission land that is Wendover Woods. The road goes up and down a bit before eventually reching a high point of 277m near the cafe.

Not quite sure why Strava thinks it is a Category 4 climb when the segment running from the Green Park turnoff from London Road to the cafe at the top is 4.1km with a 4% average grade, which surely gives 16400 points, for a Grade 3 climb! Maybe the 4% grade is rounded up or something, and is actually a bit less, so it only comes in as 15999 or something.
Anyway, for all "proper" intents and purposes it is a Category 3 climb!
Perhaps the segment needs to start a bit further back down the hill in Aston Clinton or something - just to pick up that extra couple of metres of climbing that will make all the difference (!)
Update: I tinkered with the start of the segment a bit, and moved it back down the slope at the start - now it is showing up as a 5km stretch with an average gradient of 4% (which equals 20,000 points, which is smack bang in the middle of the Category 3 range). There is clearly some rounding going on by Strava, as the segment length is 4.9km, not 5km!


Although the snow in Aylesbury is long gone, there are
still vestiges of it up here in The Chilterns.

The "disco dancer" markings they use up
on the path between Buckland and Tring
always make me smile :-)

View from the bridge - after the loop through the woods, I went up the rest of the hill that is London Road.
This is the bridge over the "new" A41 at the top.
I went round both of the roundabouts up there, then back down the "old" A41, and home.

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