Guild Wheel Disaster

Rob and I had planned to cycle around the Guild Wheel route yesterday. For those of you who don't live anywhere me, it's basically just a 21 mile route around my town suitable for cyclists, runners and walkers. It's almost all off road and goes past a river and in lots of countryside. However, I think someone was against us as just about everything went wrong...

To start things off, the weather yesterday afternoon and evening was horrendous, it was pouring down with rain although initially it didn't stop us wanting to get out on our bikes and have a go. But then there was a bit of a disaster, my bike had two wheels which were both completely flat. Fortunately, my mum headed out to go and get a new pump to save the day. But it looked like my bike had two punctures as they were not blowing up at all!!! Option B was to take my mum's bike instead and take the pump with us incase anything else happened so that's what we decided to do.

So we chucked the bikes into the back of Rob's van and headed off to get nearer the start of the route. By now, what motivation I had once had for the bike ride, had almost completely gone. The weather was horrible and this meant that I really couldn't be bothered - the weather always massively affects my mood. To make matters even worse, after going about a quarter of a mile, the back tyre of the bike I was on had gone completely flat. Rob tried to save the day with the pump but it snapped half way through! Rob offered to swap bikes but the one he was on had the most uncomfy saddle ever so I was stuck with a flat tyre. (You see what I mean about the whole thing being a disaster?!?!)

I was determined though to at least get somewhere with the bike ride, so we carried on until mile 3 and then turned around and came back. Overall we managed about 7 miles if you included getting to and from the van to the start of the Guild Wheel, so it wasn't a massive disaster but it wasn't what we had set out to achieve either.

We finished things off nicely with a drink at a local pub with one of Rob's friends from uni who we had bumped into when putting our bikes away and then headed off for a Chinese to round the adventure off .

We've decided we will give it another go when the weather is on our side and we've fixed my bike, I'm actually looking forward to it, yesterday didn't put me off to much!!