We've gone cycling by mistake...

(extra points if you can tell me where I've nicked that from).  It wasn't ace.  Bits of it was abject hell.  We spent the first four miles running up and down cobbled streets cos we got lost.  Then, just as the arm burn was beginning to wear off, we hit a 3 mile road which was at least 6 inches thick with churned mud.  Now, you know I hate cycling in mud.  The Gidds knows I hate cycling in mud.  Even the bike knows I hate cycling in mud. And it agrees with me.  It's horrible stuff, sticks to your tires, splats it's way up the bike and then sucks all the energy from your thighs.  And you have to actually  look at it in order to get through it; it changes, hides sh!t that could brain you, and you spend your time watching it get stickier and uglier than you ever thought possible.  Now I'm not a girly girl.  I don't mind getting dirty.  But ffs I hate that sh!t.  Now I had a long time to think about this, because that 3 miles took us another 50 minutes.  After that there was another couple of miles of fire track road - not really a road at all, just a dirt track covered by a thick layer of really loose tiny little stones.  It was here there was a casualty...

We couldn't remember how to put the route in Garry Garmin so the Giddy Blonde had decided to use  his three-day-old-brand-spanking-all-shiny-and-everything-new phone, thinking that since we were really in his neck of the woods we'd be able easily find our way back should the battery die.  It was on the little pebble sh!t he fell, riding one handed fingering this thing (I'm not jealous) trying to see when the next turn was happening (not soon enough I can tell you!).  He's taken a nasty chunk of skin off his hand (having took his glove off to use the phone) dunted his elbow and grit rashed a 4 inch section on his thigh where he landed, and finally put a hole in his snowboarding jacket (he was wearing a pair of corduroys, snow gloves, and his bright green snowboarding jacket, for an intended 40 mile cycle; sometimes there are no words).

We had a short spit of road and then it was along the Dyce railway line in 20mph head wind, that blew my sunny disposition home, leaving me on that sodding railway line.

When we got back on the road, got to the first major hill, his front gear pranged and that was all she wrote really. On actual proper road it wasn't that bad going, just oh-my-god not our day at all.


The flat gap in the middle is where we went and hid in the Giddy Blonde's mum's house.  The flat bit at the end is where I needed a sit down and a shower before me and the bike could look at each other.

So lessons learned:
Remember how to use big G - I think I've written a post actually...
Don't let the Gids pick the route - he's terrified of the big bad roads and had chosen the smaller ones specifically.  Never let him choose the route at all - the google car hadn't even been down the one we went down.  It even looks dark and forboding - though it didn't have all those trees yesterday but that's how they get you!

Anyhoo.  I'm consoling myself that there's a certain steeliness in plugging away at something - next weekend!

Mx