Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

If you are a long(ish) distance cyclist how do you measure your achievements against those of others? Obviously there is no simple, meaningful co‎mparison but the Eddington Number has a damned good go. Put simply your Eddington number is the number of times you have cycled that many miles in a day. So 10 means you have cycled 10 miles on 10 occasions. Obviously if your Eddington number is 10 ‎you will want to try and avoid any conversation involving Eddington numbers! So what is mine? Dunno. Or rather, dunno exactly. It is definitely higher than 75 and probably lower than 85. I reckon 78-80 would be a fair guess. As a man who can confidently expect his cycling prowess to decline in the coming years this is unlikely to improve much. I tend to plan my rides to not exceed 80 miles per day but the odd cock-up means I might reach an EN of 90.  ‎So what about my 10k miles in a year attempt? And how about barmy Steve Abrahams attempt on the world record? Well, in my case it is going surpr...

‎Well, the wind kept it up for most of the night but today it has eased a little - just 25mph blowing straight from where I am heading - so I have decided to give it a go. Once I have finished my Ibis breakfast I will head off to find my route and document the last day. There is much to admire about the land of Jonathan Foreigner. Their trains are superb, their cycle paths are a marvel and anything that requires engineering or manufacturing capability works in a way that makes us look like a bunch of Italians.   BUT their food is terrible.  ‎T heir sausages (my international yardstick for fine dining) are called wurst which is a bit harsh but they are certainly not very good. In a country that seems to eat little but pork you would think they could knock out some nice herby sausages!   But the very worst thing, and this applies to the whole of the Eurozone, is breakfast. It is little wonder that Eastern Europeans flock to the UK. It has nothing to do with immigra...