Ride Seven — Quiet on the Gravel
29.72km on a quiet gravel track at the end of a very good Saturday — a walk through Ashdown Forest with my wife and the dog, the F1 sprint, qualifying, the football on in the background, and then out on the bike as it finally cooled down.
The ride wasn’t the best part of the day. It was just the right way to finish it.
Ride seven of the Cycle the Month Challenge for Prostate Cancer UK was 29.72km in 1 hour and 26 minutes, with 126m of climbing and an average of 20.7km/h. Almost all of it on gravel, in the evening, after a Saturday I’d happily have again.
The Day It Came at the End Of
It started with the F1 sprint, which is about as good a reason as I need to sit still for an hour.
Then we took the dog out into Ashdown Forest — my wife, me, and a dog with no interest whatsoever in our conversation. We just walked. No route to stick to, nowhere we had to be, no phone out. The views up there do most of the work for you; you come round a corner, the ground drops away, and you stop for a minute without deciding to.
That is the part I keep coming back to. Not the distance we covered or how long we were out. Just walking and talking, side by side, for as long as we felt like it.
Home for qualifying, with the football on in the background. A day of two screens and a lot of fresh air.
Quiet on the Gravel
By the time I got out on the bike the evening had settled, and the gravel track was empty.
Genuinely empty — nobody coming the other way, nobody to pull over for, no junctions to sit at waiting for a gap. Just the sound of the tyres on the loose stuff and a track running away in front of me. Gravel gives you a different rhythm to the road. You cannot switch off, because the surface keeps changing under you, but you also stop thinking about anything else.
Twenty-nine kilometres went by without much happening at all, which is exactly what I wanted from it.
Cooler at Last
The other thing that made it easy was the temperature.
Some of the rides earlier this month were done in heat that made every climb feel twice as long. This one was noticeably cooler, and I felt the difference within the first ten minutes — steadier breathing, less effort for the same pace, and none of that stubborn tiredness that arrives when you have been riding warm for an hour.
126m of climbing is not a hard ride by anyone’s measure. It was still one of the more comfortable hours I have spent on the bike this month, and I suspect the weather deserves most of the credit rather than my legs.
The Ride You Didn’t Have to Talk Yourself Into
Seven rides in, I have had the tired one, the short one, the indoor one and the one with my daughter. This was the one I actually wanted to do.
There was no negotiating with myself about whether the evening was too far gone, no weighing up the sofa. The day had been good and this was simply the last part of it.
That will not be every ride, and I know it. But it is worth writing down the ones where getting out was the easy bit.
Every kilometre this month, road or gravel, is raising money for Prostate Cancer UK — funding research, raising awareness and supporting men and families dealing with a disease that affects far too many people. A good day out and a few more kilometres on the total is not a bad Saturday.
Seven rides down. And a day I would take again tomorrow.