kelly kettle

My sister Kate works with the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme and so does a lot of outdoorsy stuff. So for my birthday she bought me a kelly kettle as they use them succesfully on the scheme.

I've been itching to try it for a while now, but finding dry wood in Surrey has been difficult recently :) Today when I was putting out some cardboard for the resyk, I wondered if it work with cardboard as a fuel.



Well it does and it boiled a pint of water in a less than five minutes. Excellent!

The downside is that it's a bit smokey and I now smell of burnt cardboard :)



A great bit of kit which I can't wait to take camping for my morning coffee.

saturday ride

Today we decided on an mtb ride on the road, the roads are still very dirty and potholed at the moment. My friend Mick Ellis is featured on the front of the local Dorking newspaper. Having hit an eight inch deep hole, he was ko'd and broke his collar bone in three places. Get well soon Mick!

We have a couple of hilly routes that are mostly lanes, that we call the tour of the hills.(toth) Today we choose the toth pt2., which cuts out the Leith Hill loop from the full toth. It's a lot warmer than it has been for ages, around 8C and it feels almost balmy. Consequently, we are wearing too many clothes and overheat on the first climb :o

We ride up over Ranmore, down through Albury to climb around the back of St Martha's (here,we sprinted for the top and my chain sucked and locked the pedals. The bike bucked and I almost went over the bars as the back end came up and I rode along on the front wheel! The full force went through my mid back and it hurts a lot!) and up to Pitch Hill, drop down into Shere and retrace our steps via Coombe Bottom.

A nice 55km of riding with over a thousand metres of climbing.

Spring is approaching :)

Saturday ride

So far this year each time me and Jane decided on a road ride, Gary calls and says 'it's icy and we're meeting up for an mtb ride'. :)

So we ride down to Rykers to meet the others and we pick up Gary en route.

At Rykers we have a dozen riders and some amazing bikes ranging from the dawn of mountain biking to the present day! It's soooo cool like a living mtb museum :) There are hardtails, full sus, fully rigid, singlespeed. Many with kit that I'd forgotten existed - canti's, v brakes, six speed, seven speed. I'm not being a gear snob, it's great to see that we don't need at least six inches of travel front and rear and a two grand frame to have some fun off road :)

Anyway we had a great couple of hours pottering around the trails and stopping for tea at Newland's Corner.

Sunday ride - 14 Feb

We woke to snow again this morning and were glad that we'd put in a hard 3 hrs+ yesterday, phew :) First was a text was from Paul, he'd forgotten to get out of bed! Next was an email from the mighty D saying she'd forgotten her shoes and had to go back home! (after all the threats,tantrums and cajoling she'd had to do to get them in the first place! :-))

That left just me and Jane and Jane said 'lets go to Starbucks' As a compromise, I suggested a shortish ride. So we set out for a loop around the Epsom race course. The snow had melted by the time we set out and the chalk of the downs was exceptionally slippery. We'd forgotten what it was like to ride in the mud, and rather than letting the bike do it's thing, we were trying to control it :) So we had a nice hour and three quarters slip sliding and grinding through the mud.

Sunday Ride

Today seemed colder than ever! brrr! I still felt pretty good after yesterday and set off feeling quite strong. I wondered why Jane kept dropping off the back, but she said I was going harder than usual. Jane had her first puncture for a long time today, punctures have become fairly unusual in recent years. It seems to have coincided with our decision to eschew the use of continental tyres :)

Today was another busy day on the Downs and there were lots of walkers, horse riders and other cyclists out and about taking the air. We pretty much did a reverse of yesterday's ride taking in Blackheath on the way back. We lined out again across the Roughs but I couldn't shake off Paul and Jane. Jane wasn't prepared to let me get away two days in a row. Paul complained after that she was trying to push him off my wheel :)

A good three hours on the bike.

Saturday ride

It's time to start doing some longer Saturday rides, so me and Jane decided on a steady ride around the Downs. Out over the Roughs, up Rad Lane again where we got slightly farther before the mud stopped us again. Up through Peaslake there was a lot of ice on the roads after last night's big frost. The route we'd chosen was one that me and Roger had done a couple of Tuesdays ago. We picked up a bit of the Down's link at Bramley and headed back toward Dorking over St Martha's Hill. I stared to feel a bit wobbly here but didn't bother to eat and by the time we climbed Water Lane I was swinging all over the place :) At the top Jane was waiting with a gel and a bar :)

At that moment, we saw a group of cyclists leaving the café. It was Eric, Gary, Martin and Richard out on the mtb's to avoid the icy roads. We rode with them across the North Downs Way for a while and they turned off at The Juniper Hill bridleway to go back via Shere. Because I was feeling a bit ropey we decided to press on home via the North Downs. A few minutes later we turned around to ride back with them. We caught them on the big descent to Shere. Parts of this were in the sunshine, which had melted the top layer of frost, it was a bit treacherous in parts. Here, Richard decided to head back to Dorking on the A25. The rest of us pressed on around the back of Shere past the place where the fake cottage was built for the film Holiday, past the church used for one of the 'Four Weddings' and Bridget Jones.

Suddenly I started to feel a bit better, I can feel a bit of power in my legs. And I feel ok on the climb up to Abinger Roughs, at the top we take a singletrack cut through, where I get a stick in my rear mech that bends it into the wheel. I bend it back and it seems ok :). At Deerleap Woods I have a little dig on the front and I'm surprised to open a gap, it feels good. It's been a long time coming back to fitness and it's nice to feel a bit of power :) Gary turns off at a Westcott and me Jane, Eric and Martin ride back over the downs.

A good four hours on the bike with the bonus of meeting up with the guys.

Sundayriders Sunday ride

The snow has gone and the land of Narnia is no more. The snow was lovely, but it's time to start riding in earnest now. Me and Paul have entered the Rally di'Romagna So we need to put a few kms on the bike before then.

The five of us set off over the roughs and the nothing is too muddy. The first mud we encounter is on Rad Lane - Rad Lane is always a challenge and we all walk at some point on the first section. Jane is leading and manages to get well up the section before dabbing.

Up through Peaslake where we saw the new bike shop. There was a trailer outside with bikes on, are they doing an uplift :) As it was a nice day we rode up over Pitch Hill to take in some steady climbing.

This was the farthest point of the ride and we headed back via some singletrack and fast swoopy bits.

A nice three hours on the bike

Snowy Saturday

Me, Roger and Jane hadn't ridden in the snow yet, so we went for a little ride to Shere and back for some coffee and toast.


It was a lovely blue sky day, but very cold at first. Once we got going, the effort needed to stay upright soon warmed us. The easterly wind was bitter and exfoliating in the open and my face has lost a few layers of skin. With the numbness from the cold it looks like I've had botox!



Some of the riding was a bit tricky, but lots was surprisingly rideable. Strangely enough the climb up from Shere was mostly rideable.

Although Roger had an off, he spent the most time actually on the bike :)

More of the same on Tuesday.... hurrah!

The Big Chill

Twelve hours after returning from sunny Ibiza we go for a ride in sunny Dorking, except that it was one degree centigrade here and 20 there.

The mighty dinsdale and paul turn up and the four of us set off up the road on black ice, the main roads are ok but the side roads had yet to be gritted.

Off road the trails seem pretty good, the real problems are the small joining roads where water has run off the the hills and frozen. Paul has a minor off on one of these roads - one nano second he's on the bike the next he's not. We press on up Holmbury to the fort, where for some stupid reason we stop and chat and freeze, and then freeze completely on the descent. The climb up to Leith via High Ashes begins to warm us again. Here we meet Steve a guy I know and his friend Dom. They are pushing it a bit so me and Jane sit with them to test our legs, unfortunately Steve unships his chain and drops off the pace. Our legs are not too bad, Ibiza has helped condición nuestras forma. jeje! We continued up to the tower, which was packed with walkers and cyclists. JD wasn't far behind, which was great considering her rear brake was rubbing and the wheel wouldn't spin freely.

We descended the steep east approach to the tower. I followed the mighty Dinsdale down, it was quite icy in patches. At one drop off onto ice she locked up her back wheel and for a split second spun a full 180' around to face me before spinning back to carry on! Maybe it was intentional :)

Jane was having a good day she seemed to be able to ride everything, she wasn't fazed by the ice at all. She put it down to riding the greasy rocks in Ibiza.

A good Sundayriders ride :)

Jueves con mammoth ibiza y Kandani

This morning we drove over to San Antonio to ride out with Bartolo and Tomás. It was a bit damp to start with, a few spots of rain and bit of cloud which soon cleared once we got going. We started with a tour of the flesh pots of downtown San An' , it was quite bizarre cruising through a silent ghost town that in the summer was a huge assault on the senses ie no blaring music, no smells of fast food and no shouty people wearing England football shirts ;-)

Once into the outskirts we start to climb out over the Calas. Today is to be a tour of the Calas of the bay of San Antonio, so some 'muy tecnico' riding is coming our way. The terrain here is very rocky, not loose rocks but the ground is rocky. It looks like bubbly solidified larva filled with wheel sized holes and bumps. The locals ride lightweight five to six inch travel full suspension bikes and so Bartolo and Tomás sort of glided across the top of it. It took me and Jane a little while to get the hang of it and then we hit what must have been the longest and most technical climb on the Island. Fantastic, then we descended all the way back into San Antonio. A good three hours of tecnical and fun riding.

We jumped back into the car and headed back to Santa Eulalia because Kandani were going out for a ride later. Everyone was a bit jumpy this afternoon it was a fast paced ride with lots of singletrack and fast camino riding. Me and Jane suffered a bit with the changes of pace on the short sharp ups, but we hung on for an excellent two and a half hours.

A good day's riding