Slumming in the south of France

Easter afforded me the opportunity to take the week orf and fly to Nice for some sun, sand and surf. I went with my colleague Robin and we stayed in a caravan owned by one of his friends for a week, indulging in a spot of riding while we were there. I guess you could call it reverse slumming, as we were not that close to Nice, but hey...

We picked a good week to take off, as it snowed and was generally miserable in the UK over Easter. By contrast, we enjoyed lots of sun, although it only got up to about 10°Ré, no rain at all, but some insane winds on the first few days.

The riding was amazing down there. The roads we used - even the minor ones - were generally all lovely and smooth, unlike the rutted lanes and hard surfaces we get in the UK. There was plenty of climbing as well. No real mountains, but we did get up to 700m a couple of times. And nothing really steep either: it was all 4-5% gradients, which means you can spin up them at whatever pace you want, rather than being forced to work for it.

All up in seven days, including a race at Castle Combe last Friday (I was 12th), I managed 870km with 12,000m of climbing and roughly 30 hours of riding time. I haven't done that sort of kilometrage since 1999. Dunno yet if it did me any good but it was fun and it was nice to ride in shorts for a change.

Eucalypts! Just like home...
© Jeff Jones
Early on in the ride and Robin is still smiling.
© Jeff Jones
Scenery
© Jeff Jones
A tree above La Garde en Freinet. We didn't have to climb up this far.
© Jeff Jones
Alps (you need good eyesight to spot these)
© Jeff Jones

Highlights and lowlights

Radio Monaco. The best radio station we found after touching down in Nice. That isn't as good as it sounds. But when in France... Alas, we couldn't get it in our caravan in La Londe, so we listened to Robin's iPod incessantly. The alternatives aren't really worth mentioning.

The wind. On the third day, we battled for three hours into a 50km/h headwind, and after a 175km ride the previous day my legs were complaining. We turned and climbed up to the Plateau de Siou-Blanc and had the wind behind us all the way home, which was a relief. Unfortunately, we made an error towards the end and ended up riding down a deserted farm road. It suddenly stopped, so we turned around. But as I was reminiscing about the team time trial in Perth, a big gust of wind blew a shower of stones into our faces, then stopped us in our tracks and blew us off the road into the grass. That's never happened to me before. Fortunately, in the last few days the wind died down a bit so we were a bit less battered.

A shed. This marked the turnaround on a very windy day.
© Jeff Jones
Robin is pleased that we have a tailwind now
© Jeff Jones

Pasta. How much do I love pasta? Let me count the ways... We had it in various forms for five or six nights, broken just once by goulash. Then I had it again when I got home.

One of the many versions of pasta that we consumed
© Jeff Jones
Robin enjoys the first of several sandwiches
© Jeff Jones

Maps. The ones that show all the roads are good. The ones that are dated 1989 are not as good. One of the roads we were going to follow was paved in 1989, but isn't any longer. I didn't do my usual trick and follow it anyway, after Robin and I spied a group of mountain bikers gingerly picking their way along it. We upgraded to a 2004 edition map after that.

Hmm, it says 'Here Be Beasties' for this bit
© Jeff Jones

Bike path. There's a path that follows the coast between Hyeres and Le Cannadel, maybe 30km long, and apart from a few missing bits, it's fantastic. It's purpose built and uses quite a bit of land and small roads, following the main road very closely.

Wheelsuckers. On one of our 'rest days' we passed a guy in the headwind who jumped on our wheels. We didn't mind for a bit, but then we turned towards home and he followed us, not offering to do a turn. There was a small climb with about 20km to go and we picked it up a bit and finally dropped him and that was it, we thought. But he must have chased pretty hard and caught us again with 5km to go, gluing himself back onto our wheels. He followed us all the way to the bloody caravan park before we left him stranded, because the road we were on didn't actually go anywhere else useful.

Good descenders. On the last day, we were descending the final hill, which is fairly technical as all of them are. We both knew it well and weren't hanging around. I heard a wooshing sound past my left ear and a biggish guy flew past me, hands on the hoods! Then he overtook Robin shortly afterwards. We were impressed as we'd passed him on the preceding climb and he didn't look as though he was in a hurry.

The road down
© Jeff Jones
The mighty Col du Fourches
© Jeff Jones
Are we there yet?
© Jeff Jones

Electricity. It got chilly at night, with the wind and the lack of insulation, so we experimented with the heater. There was a fan heater but whenever we turned it on, it overloaded the circuit. Even with just two lights on. So we were forced to try the gas heater. This worked, but you had to put your hand on it to tell whether it was on or not, so it wasn't any use at all.

You can imagine what happened when some builders tried to run a cement mixer off one of the caravan outlets. You'd think after the third time of it cutting out, leaving the whole area without power, they would have cottoned on.

Easyjet. A delay of one and a half hours on the way out, and another hour coming home. Alas, it was the only way. And they charge you extra for each piece of baggage plus more for a bike, of course. Still, it could have been worse. We could have gone via Heathrow and got this, which of course leads me to hum this.

Racing. I did the third round of the Hardriders series today, the Severn RC event. 28.4km/260m of climbing/descent with one 2km drag. With this going through my head, I had a reasonable ride to finish 4th in 42'08, with the win going to Gavin Poupart (again) in 41'14, followed by Nik Gardiner in 41'26 and my Chippenham clubmate Ben Anstie in 41'53. Not bad, as it was a better field than the last event at Gillingham where I was third, and Gavin put 2min into me. And we won the team prize again with me, Ben and Simon Snowden. Allez Chippenham!

I had to ride back down the mountain to get this shot, so I'm including it
© Jeff Jones
Tiredness has set in
© Jeff Jones

Eerste zege

Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Season 2008 is go.

It's not quite as good as Thunderbirds, but it beats training.

The disc wheel I borrowed from Cycling Plus last week turned out to be a boon, as I won me first race by a mere two seconds. Over 37km, a disc is easily worth that compared to my 101mm rimmed wheel. Which leads me to the annoying conclusion that I should have borrowed the wheel for last year's journo world's. Anyway...

I had an easy 40km ride out there, and a rather slower 40km ride home. On the way out I was passed by another Bath-based rider who was in a hurry 'cos his start time was half an hour before mine. He made it with time to spare but I can't help thinking he might have burned a few matches on the way out.

Despite dire weather warnings, the conditions were reasonable, if a tad windy on the return leg. It was the same course as the 3-up that we did last year, so I'd worked out a schedule that would give me a time of 55 minutes (we did 56'30 in the 3-up). I figured I could make up lots of time on the hills but would lose a bit on the flats as there was no-one to give me a break. Turns out I was pretty close in my estimation with a final time of 55'22.

I honestly didn't think it'd be good enough to win. I thought somewhere in the region of 53-54 minutes would do it. Anyway, it was and I'm not complaining.

The start was nearly all tailwind, with a couple of little bumps before the first hill after 10km. I'd already passed three riders by the time I reached that, which was nice, and was a little bit up on my schedule. I gave it a bit more gas on the hill and at the top was already 2 minutes quicker than the same point in the 3-up (although we'd had the headwind first then). A steady descent with the tailwind followed and I reached 19km in 26'45 - now a handy 2'30 ahead of the 3-up time and a minute ahead of my own schedule, which allowed for the tailwind start.

At this point I started getting delusions of a sub-54 minute time, but these were mercilessly ground up in the headwind on the way back. I lost all of the advantage on the return on the A4, really struggling to maintain concentration and dropping a little bit of power. So by the time I reached the bottom of the last 2km climb, I was back on level pegging with the 3-up time, and now about half a minute behind my own schedule. I gave it whatever I had left up to the finish, which was just over the top, and it was all over.

The power meter said I'd averaged 304W for the ride, which didn't instil me with confidence as it was a) lower than I did the previous Tuesday in training and a lot lower than I'm capable of when it's properly warm and I've got a few miles under my belt. I think 350-360W is achievable for that distance (not yet though), and that would knock a couple of minutes off the time I did.

But it doesn't matter what your wattage is if you win :-)

I did feel a bit sorry for the second placed guy, as I know what it's like to lose by a handful of seconds. Still, what goes around comes around in time trialling, and I'm sure I'll be in that position again.

It was especially nice to win because Chippenham was promoting the event and as far as I can see, they haven't had a home winner since at least 1992. I did note that a "J Jones" won it in 1993. We also won the team prize (sum of three fastest riders per club) with Simon Snowden and young Tom Marshall. Result!

Got another race this Saturday, which will be on the same course as the Rudy Project round I did last year, down in Bruton. Just under 30km and 400m of climbing. I think I'm going to be hard pressed to beat last year's time of 44'17 because that was done under warm, windless conditions. On Saturday they're predicting heavy rain, a moderate southerly wind and a max of 8°Ré. Blurgh.

It's a stupid time of year to be racing and by far the earliest I've started doing so in the northern hemisphere. I should be watching Thunderbirds and drinking from my rapidly diminishing stock of trappists.

Dammit, I was going to write something more interesting about my misspent youth but instead ended up with the above. There is a reason I call it a bilgespot.

Postscript

I did the Gillingham race today in the wet and it lived up to expectations. I was nowhere near last year's time, finishing with 46'09 for third behind Mr Poupart, who did a very impressive 44'09. I was never going to get close to that, even on a good day. But I was 10 seconds off second place, which was slightly annoying as I lost a bit of time by being careful and waiting for a car at one of the junctions. But I stayed on the bike, which was more important.

I also took the descent at 8km to go fairly steadily, losing around 10 seconds to the guy who I was on the verge of catching at the top. It had a couple of muddy bends that I wasn't confident taking at speed, especially as one of the bits of tape I'd put over the valve holes on my disc was flapping, which was unnerving. I still hit 68km/h but the guy in front of me - who I never quite caught - knew the course and had better handling and confidence, which is what makes for good descending.

Because it was a headwind start, I was already two minutes down on last year's time by the halfway mark, and yet had the same average power. But I lost a little more on the last long drag, despite it being a tail/crosswind, and only made up 15 seconds from the top of the last hill to the finish. So nearly two minutes slower than last year. Oh well.

I'm probably doing the Castle Combe Good Friday race this week, then off to Nice for a holiday (woo hoo!) before coming back for another 30km TT at the end of the month. Jeez I hope the weather is less crap by then.

Het Volk

Sun, sand and surf. I sought them in Gent but wasn't successful, being foiled by the fact that it was Belgium.

Still, there are other things to be had in Belgique, namely beer, bike racing and bonhomie. These things coincided with Het Volk, the traditional opening of the Belgian season and one of the best races on the calendar, oi reckon.

They put the recently retired Peter Van Petegem (wot lives on the col de la Trap Op) in charge, and he devised a nice challenging course. Just like in the good old days, it started and finished in Gent instead of outside a BMW dealership in Lokeren. Way more fitting for such an important race. Especially as the final turn was across the tram tracks right outside where I used to live on Martelaarslaan.

Philippe Gilbert, top rider and eventual winner
© Jeff Jones

Check out the plumage
© Jeff Jones
Reiny watches
© Jeff Jones
Het Volk is go
© Jeff Jones

I thought Philippe Gilbert (FDJ) or Tom Boonen (Quick.Step) would win, and after Quick.Step imploded somewhere near Ronse it was up to Gilbert to bridge the three minute gap to the break, which had one of his teammates in it. A nice bit of riding there by FDJ to give Gilbert the perfect springboard for an attack on the cobbles with 20km to go. Race over. Gilbert's a genuinely good rider too. You don't win the King of the Mountains classification in the Tour Down Under without oozing talent.

I watched it from the confines of the Irish pub and then Reiny's shop. It was a most excellent way to spend a Saturday, once I had shaken off the hangover from Friday. I'd gotten into Gent about 9:30 and Reiny, Gab, Gwen and I did not pass go, we immediately went to the Marimain for a few quiet ones.

Watching Gilbert win
© Jeff Jones

Saturday night was rather longer. We didn't quite visit as many cafes as last year (seven), but we did manage three or four. The fourth was the Irish pub where we stayed and chatted to Gwen's colleagues for some time (well after closing). It could have gone pear-shaped as the barman kept bringing out shots of blue and green hue, that I believe were alcoholic in nature. Fortunately by that stage we were more tired than drunk and decided to call it a night at around, erm, 6am.

A visit to Mokabon some hours later was in order.

Ahh, Mokabon
© Jeff Jones

Notes

I. Wouter Weylandt was the best placed Quick.Step finisher in Het Volk. It just goes to show how important training langs de Schelde is for the condition.

II. Must bring the bike on the next trip, but only if it's longer than a couple of days.

III. Cafe Igor has gone broke. I'm surprised it took that long. You cannot expect a drinking establishment to do well when the floors are deliberately made to be uneven. The lighting was so cold as well.

IV. Rochefort 10° knocks you around when you've been drinking the watered down stuff they have in England.

V. Despite lack of Schelde training and large amounts of drinking, I knocked another 10sec off the times up the two hills I did around here last week. 410W x 2 for four and a bit minutes, which is OK for this time of year. Also managed 310W for an hour and a bit on Tuesday, not going flat out. Which is also OK.

VI. First race of the season for me tomorrow. I have acquired a disc wheel, so hope I don't puncture it on the way out to Devizes. Or indeed during the race.

Wouter Weylandt (L) and eventual second place getter Nick Nuyens (R) on stage
© Jeff Jones
Igor has gone broke. Quelle shock
© Jeff Jones
Boris and Gab spot a kermis
© Jeff Jones

Bumping for victory

Rowing is the oldest sport at Oxford. Three big regattas a year are held on the Isis (or the Thames, as some people call it) with different rules for each. The different colleges vie for supremacy in each, with a good deal of kudos going to the winners. And of course there's also the Oxford vs Cambridge celebrity deathmatch which has been going on for yonks.

Eights is where it's at and each college has its own boat collection, sharing boathouse space with one or two other colleges. The boats cost £20,000 each so sinking one on the first day of a regatta is generally frowned upon. Because the students are too po' to pay for their own boats, it means an old college boy has to put their hand in their pocket to fund a new vessel. In return, they'll get their name on the boat. This system probably doesn't end up in a high ROI for the old boy, unless they float themselves on the stock exchange and become a going concern. But hey, they're all staggeringly rich so the odd 20K isn't going to matter.

I happened to be in Oxford visiting the other Lucy and Pete, whose bro Ben was rowing for Wolfson in the Torpids three day regatta. I had cycled up from Bath on the final day, Saturday, only getting slightly lost on the way, and was there well in time to learn the rules and watch the races.

Torpids is no ordinary competition where you line the boats up next to each other, fire the gun and everyone rows like buggery to the finish line. Instead, they start behind each other, one and a half boat lengths apart. The idea is to catch the boat in front of you, called 'bumping', then you can stop. You don't actually have to hit the boat, but it happens. More commonly, the cox in the boat in front concedes when there is some overlap. On the other hand, if the boat behind you catches you, you are 'bumped' but have to keep rowing until you either catch someone in front or you reach the finish line.

If you bump someone, you take the place in their next round, slowly moving up the ladder if you've got a good crew. The problem is, there are four divisions of about a dozen each, and because you only get one regatta a year, it can take years to move up a division. The lead boat in div I - should they manage to hold off all those behind it - gets to be Head of the River (uber prestigious). The other thing to aim for is four bumps in a single regatta, which earns your college a set of rowing blades.

Now, on the first day, University College hit a tree on one of the bends of the river and couldn't get going again, losing about 10 places all in one hit. That was disastrous for them, but at least they didn't sink it. And on the last day, we saw one boat catch another but the lead boat couldn't keep going because one guy had broken his oar. High drama there. They lost a few places too...

Ben's Wolfson college had a very good meet, moving up from Div III to Div II, bumping three times but just missing out on the last day on catching Lincoln, which had started two boats in front. St Edmunds (Teddy) Hall had started directly in front of Wolfson, but were faster and bumped Lincoln early, leaving a big gap for Wolfson to close. Meanwhile, Merton was trying to catch Wolfson from behind, and was getting close for a while but didn't do it.

It was surprisingly exciting. Especially when you had someone to cheer for.

The Head of the River, in both the men's and women's I think, went to Magdalen pronounced 'maudlin' College, who jumped a few places to keep long time top dogs Oriel out of the running and down in third place. Champagne concentration in the Isis rose as a result.

Most of the colleges rowed in uniform, and there were some really nice strips. Especially Christ Church and St Johns, who put their white hoodies on when warming up. And the college which had a yellow cross on a red background, which looked like it hailed from the crusades.

We wound up at the Lamb and Flag followed by a restaurant that served excellent bangers and mash, then the Jericho pub, then a bop (party type thing) at Balliol College. Some alcohol was consumed.

All in all, a brilliant Oxford experience.

Retro: What happened to the UQ team?

Talking to Marty, a friend of Lucy's, during the evening revealed that he hailed from the Uni of Queensland. Not only that, he was a good cyclist and did a couple of uni games in the early '90s. I realised our paths must have crossed at least once, and we reminisced about beating Robbie McEwen's team in the team time trial in Brisbane (McEwen won every other event, including the bloody time trial, and he broke away to win the road race solo). Significantly, I learned what happened to the UQ team in the TTT in Melbourne (or Diggers Rest to be accurate) in 1991.

Now, UQ had some decent riders, as we (Sydney) knew after being caned by them the previous year in Armidale. Michael 'Drago' O'Donoghue, Brett Lentz, Brad Hall and Marty formed their TTT team in Melbourne. Uni of NSW were strong too, with Paul O'Neill, Derek Walker and Ben Litchfield, and they ended up winning I think.

But UQ snatched defeat from the jaws of a victory after being forced to rely on a sick Marty as their third man. Brad Hall knew Marty wasn't going to make it so he did the gallant thing and pulled out on the first lap. That left Marty to try to hang on, which he wasn't in any condition to do. He ended up in a lot of trouble and could barely see by the last lap and had to be pushed by the other two just to finish. Hell, we might have even beat them after but that might be wishful thinking on my part. Our team was me, Nick Fletcher, Andrew Redmond (or Tully, possibly?) and Andrew Kelly. We lost Kelly on the first lap and Nick and I had to nurse the third man around for the next two laps.

UQ did get revenge two years later by winning in Brisbane. We got the silver with me mostly sitting behind the diminutive Roy Denoon and Dave and Graham hanging on for dear life. But we passed Robbie McEwen (Griffith Uni) who was dragging around two riders of, shall we say, lesser ability, and the dirty look he gave us was well worth it. It may have had something to do with the fact that Roy trumpeted like an elephant when we passed them.

For the record, we still won it in Perth ('92), Wollongong ('94) and Darwin ('95) but got done by Jono Hall and some ring-ins in Canberra ('96). I love the team time trial.

The way back

After a night where too much beer was barely enough, I was revived by Lucy and Pete's cooking and coffee (three of them, in fact). I discovered where I'd made the incorrect turn on the trip out and navigated to it on the way home. The dead end signs did not deter me. Google maps is always right, innit?

After a few km I saw a wall in front of me, and I realised the road was going straight up it. 15% average grade for about half a km took me up to Barbury Castle and the end of the (paved) road. I was buggered if was going to turn around so I set off on what was now a dirt track and quickly became very muddy. I asked two mountain bikers coming the other way if the road led anywhere, and they assured me it did end up near Marlborough, but I'd probably ruin my bike getting there. You can guess the rest.

6km and 45mins later, I emerged just north of Marlborough, somewhat muddy. Luckily it rained soon after so a lot of the mud was washed off.

It must have done some good as I was able to beat a couple of my hill times later in the week. Then I undid all the work by heading over to Belge for the Het Volk weekend. But that is another story.

The Bath Cider Festival

The concept is very simple and I'm sure very lucrative. Hire a big hall, bring in 100 different casks of cider and serving staff, and charge people £5 to enter and £1.30 for each half-pint of cider. You can even bring in a live band.

It was called the Bath Cider Festival, which was as good a name as any. Luckily it was indoors because it was (is) bastard cold - below freezing at the moment.

There were well over a dozen of us that went, from various circles, and I'd say it was worth the price of admission. Choosing a cider was tricky because you only had a list of names and alcohol percentages. With some you could guess their taste, like Golden Valley sweet or Thatchers Gold, but others were quite random, like Sheep Dip (drinkable), Black Rat (good enough that I had two glasses), Tricky medium (blurgh), or Raspberry Perry (disgusting).

It was probably a good thing that they weren't serving full pints. It took ages to get a drink too, because there were 12 serving staff between several hundred cider drinking folk.

The band was called the Mangledwurzels, a tribute to the famed Scrumpy and Western band, the Wurzels. Alroight? They kicked off with "Combine Harvester" (30 years old but still going strong) and went onto perform "Drink Up Thy Zider", "Threshing Machine" and "Walkin' 'Cross The Yard" (sung to the Police's "Walking on the Moon") and many, many more.

The crowd was, as you'd expect, mostly west country toiypes, including a football team modelled on the Lord of the Rings. They all had yellow shirts with the names and numbers of the players on the backs: "Gollum 14", "Arwen 17", "The Ring 26", "Boromir 23" etc.

Which reminds me of Bill Bailey being interviewed on and old episode of "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross". Mr Bailey explained that he auditioned for the part of Gimli the dwarf in the LotR movies, but he did it in his native west country accent (he was born in Bath). He was told they didn't want to cast anyone with that accent and instead the part of Gimli went to John Rhys-Davies, who was Welsh.

But when Mr Bailey saw the film he realised all the hobbits had west country accents. "'Alroight Mr Frodo?' It was like being at a bloody cider festival!" quoth Bill.

Weather: dry but bloody cold. -3.2°Ré in the mornings.

Riding: good. I've figured out a TT training loop up around the Kingsdown golf course. Two different 8.8km laps + one big lap of 12.5km. 400m of climbing in 40km, so it's a good primer for the hardriders courses.

Disaster!

So seven of us go to Oxalis on Friday for a lunchtime tea/coffee stop. But when ordering coffee, we are informed that the cafetieres are now for one person only, and yet they are the same price. In fact, you now get less than half the coffee as before. The waitress said that she didn't make the rules, but...this is an outrage!

It's gone from being one of the cheapest places in Bath to have coffee to the most expensive by far. If the coffee wasn't so good, I'd boycott it altogether. As it was, I didn't order a cake. And I told them why. It's a false economy to hike the price by more than 100%.

Tea is still shareable between two for the same price, and it's good tea there. Still, I'll have to cut down my visits by more than half.

Fortunately I've found two more places that do half decent stuff. The Epicurean Deli and the Hub Cafe in the alley opposite the Guildhall. They're between £1.40 and 1.50 per coffee, compared to £2.75-2.95 at Oxalis.

I also ventured into McDonald's to try their brew, which is £1.19. I only did this because I was assured by an ex-barista that they have got their machine settings right world over, and they use good beans. This, I'm afraid, is bollocks. It wasn't even Starbucks quality.

On a more positive note, the weather is actually noice:

Drier than Sydney :-)

After an easy week this week, brought on by the two silly-hard rides last weekend, I felt quite good on the club run today. We wound it up at the end and it was nice to open the throttle a bit.

A month to the first TT, which is to be the Chippenham hilly 24. But there are still roadworks on the course, which I did before the club run, so I hope it can be moved. The course that we did the 3-up on last year would be a good substitute.

Sunday I got out with Will and a few other members of the Comedy Super Team for four hours. We went up to Corsham to pick up one guy, then down through Trowbridge, Frome and Wells, coming back a different way to Aquae Sulis.

The real comedy came just after Trowbridge when Simon suggested we get off the main road and take the lanes. It was fine until we hit a section which obviously didn't have much drainage and was covered in black ice and sheet ice.

Simon: "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea..."

Five seconds later, both Stan and Pete slid off, followed by Simon behind me. Only Will and I stayed upright! No-one was hurt, although Stan was covered in manure. We walked through the rest of that section.

Funnily enough, later on in the ride it was warm enough to ride with no gloves. Looks good for most of this week too.

Joyous February

Weather: still stupid. The dryness has given way to less desirous elements although it hasn't snowed darn sarf yet.

Saturday was the best. The temp started at -0.8°Ré but got up to as much as 4°Ré by midday. Thus, the lanes were a bit icy in the morning but at least there wasn't much mud or wind. Robin and I did a slightly longer but less hilly Mendips ride (Cheddar, Burrington, A39 up from Wells) than last week and I finished up with 135km.

Sunday started at 4°Ré and stayed there, although the 5 Beaufort wind (that's 40km/h in real money) made it chillier. I went norf towards the Severn and did a lap of the old Dursley hilly 24 course. 720m of climbing(!) in just under 40km and I thought I did OK to get around in 1hr24. Then I found out that the actual course that'll be used for the race in April this year is a modified version: 47km total, 1010m of climbing/860m of descent(!) That's what I call challenging.

After doing that, I faced a rather sapping 40km ride home into the bloody wind, 140km total. Still, I appear to be gaining some fitness. Another month until me first race. Whee!

In the social drinking stakes, I've finally managed to get to the Old Green Tree, which is a really fine, albeit small pub. It's one that attracts 'characters' rather than just being a pub where the locals are a bit odd. I hasten to add that I am not one of these characters. I'm perfectly sane and I have a certificate to prove it somewhere. I was inveigled to try a few pints of local stout, which was alright until I had a Leffe and realised what beer should taste like. Then I spotted some Chimay...

Reading Writing Home by Alan Bennett. It consists of various observations on his life, a collection of diaries over a number of years. It's quite good once you get into it.

I watched Wales beat England in the rugby, which was unbeloivable. Hasn't been done in 20 years!

The Club Do

"Count Bobulescu will take wine with the ambassador of Transylvania."

"The ambassador of Transylvania will take wine with Count Bobulescu."

[repeat until both are sloshed, as neither wishes to break protocol]

This is a rough excerpt of a sketch called something like The Toastmaster, which often gets quoted in our family. I was reminded of it several times at our Club Dinner in Chippenham, as there was a competition for who could make the best toast. The winner got a dragon's tongue trophy, which was pretty cool.

There must have been two dozen toasts, many from the Bath CC/Bristol South contingent, who had obviously had experience of this sort of thing. But the winner was Mark Wareham, whose story of what happened on our club ride two weeks ago was rather amusing.

That was the day where I'd turned off with Chris Tweedie and a couple of others to navigate the floods around Wiltshire. The others also encountered flooded bits, but had the good fortune to be offered a lift by a bus driver! Which they took, of course.

Except for one rider, who didn't realise that the bus had picked the rest of them up and soldiered on by himself through various torrents, only to be rejoined at the end by drier members.

We were also entertained by Geoff Thomas, ex-England footballer wot got leukaemia, survived and decided to ride the Tour de France with a few of his mates. Twice.

He did the first one on six months' training, right after finishing his treatment. Impressive effort, that! And he raised quite a lot for cancer charities.

In the trophy stakes, Chippenham has approximately a million different competitions throughout the year, based on doing certain events on the calendar. I was sitting with Chris Tweedie and Ben Anstie, and they were the trophy kings (Ben, mostly).

I managed to accumulate approximately zero trophies, save for a large pile of pint glasses that may have once had beverages in them. Now Chris is a big fan of volume over intensity when it comes to drinking (the opposite of his training program) and I had no choice but to go along with that, albeit with stronger beers. Well I did have a choice but it wasn't a sane one.

Six pints of Peroni/Grolsch/Guinness later, I thought it might be a good idea to get the last train home. Somehow - and I really don't know how this happened because my judgment was completely sound - I left my new BC racing licence behind. Luckily someone whose judgment was even better than mine spotted it and picked it up (thanks Andy and Jacqui).

I've been downgraded to second category on account of the fact that I didn't race last year (time trials are run by a different mob than British Cycling). You need a certain number of points each year to keep your category, and more to move up. It doesn't bother me this year because cat. 2 is essentially the same as cat. 1 - typically they run races as E/1/2, but hardly ever E/1 or just 1. And you actually have more race options as a cat. 2.

Anyway, maybe I'll pull my finger out and do a road race this year. But I have some time trial ambitions...

Seeing as the Club Do was on a Saturday, it left the whole of Sunday to do a 120km Mendips ride with RCoomber. It's finally stopped raining although it was a tad breezy as we navigated four decent climbs and lots of little ones, plus a few cool lanes that are new to me. 2000m of climbing and sore legs at the end.

The training is going in the right direction: more or less forward and slightly to the left and I'm now back to March 2007 form, as opposed to being behind January 2007 form. My Cheddar Gorge times have come down: 10'50 -> 10'06 -> 9'44, and Burrington has gone from 12'15 -> 10'40, although we didn't do it today. Probably would have been 10'20ish but I conned convinced poor Robin into doing the one up from Blagdon Lake instead (8.5% for 2.5km), followed by Wookey Hole (2.7km @ 7.2%, which at least has a couple of flat spots).

The aim is to get April form by March and May form by April, then I'll probably get sick. So I'm ahead on that front.

Song du jour: Energy 52 (Café del Mar).

Humidity

I seem to recall January 2007 was somewhat moist, vis-à-vis the climate. Due to the cyclical nature of things, it is so again this year. It has rained almost every day since I got back and there appears to be no end in sight.

Flooding has ensued, which means Tewksbury in Gloucestershire is buggered again. The Avon is rather higher than it should be, as you can see from the MBUK blog. The bike path where I usually ride is OK, but it has a 100m long puddle on it now.

Last weekend, a few of us tried to cross the Avon between Trowbridge and Bradford. Negatory. About 250m of road was submerged by the river, and there was a car abandoned halfway across. We ended up going across at Lacock, and even that required riding through 1.5 feet of water. Of course, we could have gone on the pedestrian footbridge but that would have been wimping out.

My bottom bracket is making odd noises.

I've been trying new waterproofing tricks to keep myself on the dryish side. For my feet, which always get cold, I've been using a thin pair of Castelli waterproof booties with my old neoprene Pro booties over the top. I tried it on a four hour ride last weekend, and it worked brilliantly. With my hands, I've been using disposable latex gloves underneath my winter gloves. This is not as good, because your hands end up like clammy prunes, but at least they don't get cold.

As I noted previously, training in January is miserable. Last Sunday, I did a 115km loop through the Mendips and clocked myself up my two favourite climbs there: slowest times ever. I wasn't going flat out for sure, but I only managed 10'50 for Cheddar (did 7'38 in the national HC) and 12'15 for Burrington (8'07 in the HC there). It was a horribly windy day, which didn't help, but at the pace I was going I would be a couple of minutes quicker when fit. I was at this time last year because I'd been riding since the start of November instead of since Christmas.

I think I'll catch up OK, because I've already noticed a big increase in speed this week. Roughly five minutes faster over my various 45km loops, so no need to panic. I skipped today because of the non-stop rain and a day off won't hurt. Stupid bloody weather.

Social calendar: strangely busy. I even had an English ale this week that didn't taste like dishwater. It's called Gem and is meant to be one of the best Bath ales. To my complete shock I was able to drink three pints of it.

As you were.

The here and now

It's that time of year. January, in fact. When the cold gets to one's brain unless one is in the sunny Antipodes. Which one is not. Curse.

Since returning to the Empire, I have been reacquainting myself with the measurement system used here. It's mostly metric, but miles, feet, yards, inches, pounds, stone, fluid ounces, pints (lots of them) are all commonly used. Temperature seems to be Celsius, but to avoid confusion I'm going to adopt the Réaumur scale. I like it. It's simple, it relates to real life measurements (fingers, toes, number of bacteria) and was named after a French scientist.

For example, today it was 3.2°Ré, which in real world terms converts to 'fairly bloody cold'. Now in Celsius that would have been 4°C, which is far less intuitive, non? I could always use Rankine, but that's a bit old fashioned.

Riding at the moment means that one not only gets cold, one gets wet as well. Into the bargain, so to speak. It's a supercool me two for the price of one real raw deal meal. Fortunately it's heating up, as you can see from the BBC's forecast over the next half a day or so:

Weather forecast for Bath. Balmy, innit? Better not overdress.

After missing a couple of weeks training in Oz due to a certain lurgy, I'm struggling with the twin burdens of regaining what little fitness I had at the time as well as coping with the cold, which slows one down anyway. This morning, for example, I was 15 minutes slower than my best time over one of my usual 45km training loops, for roughly the same pace. I know it will all come back over the next few months, but it's still soul destroying.

I wasn't the only one who got sick over Xmas. Pretty much everyone in the office did, and even now I'm working in the middle of four sick boys. I hope my immune system has worked out how to stop another dose of the dreaded lurgy. The spon cure, perhaps.

I've been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of more Bath types, without visiting the Pump Room. They're part of a Bath Publishing Front and seem to enjoy pints and the occasional strudel. This, I strongly approve of. Three of us visited the only strudel house in Bath, a ye olde Swisse-German underground place not far from the Royal Crescent. Talk about when worlds collide. But we didn't talk about it. Strudel: v. good. Vanilla dusted cappuccino: not sure about that one...

Starbucks have opened another shoppe in Bath. That's three, including our canteen. They must be stopped. We will frequent Oxalis on a regular basis this year, I foresee.

Speaking of Starbucks (well, I was), I've been following the US election with an almost keen interest. I wonder if it will be anything like the '72 election that Hunter S. Thompson wrote so fondly about? Anyway, at least I now have an inkling of an understanding of how the whole circus works.

Research

A university controlled study has shown that repeatedly watching this clip (youtube.com/watch?v=jZsHNkAJBDU) followed by the rather dark Sin City, which was on late on BBC2 on Sunday, results in particularly gruesome dreams. I could have watched the first of the new series of Foyle's War, which is excellent (ma and pa, rejoice!), but I didn't.

Down Under randomness

It's annoying when you go on holidays for three weeks and the first two weeks is spent sick and/or at the mercy of a certain international airline.

I've managed to do fun things like see my accountant and go to the dentist. The latter informed me of how things once were at the NHS, relating the experiences of a colleague of hers. Apparently with kids dentistry they got paid a flat rate of £35 a go, so instead of filling teeth they were told by the boss to pull them out because it was quicker. This dentist could pull a tooth in 30 seconds whereas it would take 4 minutes to fill it. So they could see more patients and get paid more if they just pulled out teeth. I don't think this would be an ideal solution.

I don't know how long ago this was, but apparently things have improved within the NHS. It ain't a patch on the Aussie system though.

I also learned that eating often may be good for your energy levels but it can be detrimental for your teeth and your wallet. Thus, mine need quite a bit of patching up. Especially my wallet, which no longer has $1500 burning a hole in it. I'll have to have a rethink about my dietary plan throughout the day. The trick is to drink water with every snack in order to lower the pH in your mouth, and brush a couple of times a day.

Random thought: I reckon Anton Ego in Ratatouille is modelled on English writer/critic Will Self, not just the French blone mentioned in Wikipedia.

During my convalescence I've managed to do more indoor stuff than normal. On the piano front, I've almost got a grip on Clair de Lune plus the usual Chopin/Rachmaninov/Bach/Satie toons. Always noice to tinkle the ivories.

Also a spot of reading. Over the past three weeks, I've completed the following:

The Light Fantastic, Pyramids, Moving Pictures, Night Watch, all by Terry Pratchett - good comfort reading by a very funny and satirical writer.

Amongst the Dead by Robert Gott - a dark spoof about an Australian private investigator and the wilds of the north, not bad but the ending didn't quite work.

The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson - well written, although it was hard to relate to the characters, who were mostly loathsome.

The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene - An excellent novel by a brilliant writer. The first three parts are written by the protagonist, who is a journalist but doesn't consider himself much of a writer. The last part tells the rest of the story after the novel is thrown in the bin. All of the characters are interesting and at least slightly mysterious, and none of them can be considered good guys.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - set mostly in Bath at the start of the 19th century. It's interesting to see the similarities between then and now. The done thing then was to hang around the Pump Room and attend balls in the hope of making acquaintances and finding a partner. It's not quite like that nowadays.

The heroine is Catherine Morland, who early on falls for Henry Tinley, but spends the first half of the book avoiding the advances of the oafish John Thorpe, the brother of her new acquaintance Isabella. The second half is set in Northanger Abbey itself, and is a bit of a spoof of the Gothic novels that were partly the rage back then. Ann Radcliffe is referred to a lot, so it would help to have read some of her novels to give this more context.

The two main themes (Bath life and Gothic novels) are a little odd when put together, but who's going to argue with a classic?

There are some funny quotes:

"Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one?" - Henry Tinley to Catherine Morland

Outside the Pump Room: "Crowds of people were every moment passing in and out, up the steps and down; people whom nobody cared about, and nobody wanted to see; and he [Mr Tinley] only was absent. 'What a delightful place Bath is,' said Mrs. Allen, as they sat down near the great clock, after parading the room till they were tired; 'and how pleasant it would be if we had any acquaintance here.'

I then saw The Jane Austen Book Club on the (mostly) incident-free flight back to Londres. It was scary stuff.

Blind Faith by Ben Elton - A modern and somewhat more comical version of 1984. Privacy is heresy in a climate changed world. If you're not talking about yourself on your blog, sharing all your information on Face Space and cyberstalking others, you risk falling foul of God and the Love. More scary stuff.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - three books, the first of which has been made into a movie called The Golden Compass. The writing isn't brilliant but the story does hook you in eventually and it contains some challenging ideas. Unfortunately, for reasons only known to Hollywood, the film deliberately ignores the pivotal theme of the books: the bad guys are the Church and God. That's a great pity, I think. I read an interview with Pullman where he's clearly not happy with this, but doesn't want to say too much because he's afraid he'll jeopardise the other two films. That's basically selling out.

There has been a strong religious backlash against the books in the USA. Fair enough - freedom of religion and all that. People (probably Catholics) are afraid that their kids will be corrupted to the dark side if they read the books. I think that's utter bollocks, 'cos I remember when, as a child, I read the Narnia septology, which was very pro-Christian. I was aware of this message when I read the books (many times) and simply ignored it. They were good yarns. Ditto when I read the Dreadstar comics in my teens. The bad guys there were the Church and Lord Papal, which I thought was cool. Neither of these stories had a significant effect on my decision to be an atheist and face the void.

Speaking of facing the void, I read that Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Front is opposing the building of an Islamic school out at Camden because Islam opposed Christianity. I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that Australia had freedom of religion as well. Sigh. As someone said, "I don't think he realises the Crusades were over long ago."

Whatever creed you follow, I hope youse had a happy Christmas + good new year's bash.

The family Christmas album

Christmas at the Joneses in Kiribilli House
© Jeff Jones
Piers cuts a chunk of ham as cousin Harry looks on
© Jeff Jones
Serious business
© Jeff Jones
Nina was content with bread crusts
© Jeff Jones
Strewth! This was followed by stollen and immobility
© Jeff Jones
All four of the Jones cousins
© Jeff Jones
Jim, Joan, Margaret and Ma at the Nelson Bay residence
© Jeff Jones
Cousin Jus and Nic's 'new' place. Note handy urban vehicle in backyard
© Jeff Jones
Cousin Zoe is happy at being three
© Jeff Jones
Cousins Jus and Zoe sort out candles and whatnot
© Jeff Jones
Ma and pa at our last supper
© Jeff Jones

Flight 714 to Sydney

You can tell how the money is distributed
© Jeff Jones

It is said that disasters come in threes. I believe I've successfully proved this theory wrong although it wasn't all bad.

I booked with Royal Brunei Airlines because it was one of the cheapest options at this time of year. And Brunei, being one of the world's richest countries per capita, should have a decent national carrier, right?

I should have been concerned when they changed my schedule four times because they cancelled a whole stack of flights between Brunei and Sydney. So instead of leaving Heathrow on Saturday morning and getting into Sydney on Monday morning, it ended up being Tuesday morning with a 36 hour stopover in Brunei.

That wasn't so bad because I've never been to an Asian country before, and Brunei is not like most of them. It has a small population (370,000), has a GDP of $10billion, its residents don't pay tax and get free education and health care, plus quite a few other perks, it's 70% Muslim/30% Christian, has strong prohibition so everybody works two jobs instead of going out at night (helps if there are no pubs), and is under the strict control of the Sultan, who is the third richest man in the world behind Bill Gates and me. It's considered poor form to criticise the government in the media so it appears everything is hunky dory in this small country on the Malaysian island of Borneo.

Second thing to go wrong: Royal Brunei's computer system at Heathrow went down, leaving us waiting impatiently in a queue for a while. We took off a little late, but I didn't have to be anywhere in a hurry so I didn't mind.

I watched nearly six movies between London and Dubai, then Dubai and Bandar Seri Begawan. Stardust (quite funny in places and a very good cast), The Bourne Ultimatum (think I spotted a bit of Oxford in it), Ratatouille (good), The Darjeeling Limited (vaguely amusing but didn't really do much for me), Romeo and Juliet (the 1996 version, v. good) and the first part of It's a Wonderful Life.

The Brunei Hilton

We got to Brunei at about 11am Sunday morning and set about sorting out hotels. I was in the same one as three others from the flight - Amy, Olivier and Kristie - and it was agreed that we should Do Stuff together. Make the best of it, see the country, and so on.

The hotel was called the Traders Inn. It had beds but it wasn't quite up to six star standard. Grubby walls, mouldy bathroom and a stroppy manager who didn't let us check out late for our 11:30pm flight on Monday, despite it saying on our vouchers that we had two days and one night there. Oh well.

Thrown together by misfortune: me, Kristie, Olivier, Amy
© Jeff Jones

We headed back into the city in the late afternoon and decided on a boat tour of the floating village. This houses about 50,000 people (the rest of the city has another 50,000) and consists of a large number of wooden houses built on pillars. It's about 30 years old and I reckon it would be in trouble if a decent storm hit it.

Our guide was excellent and only wanted to charge us $20 (about 7 quid) for a one hour tour - we gave him another $10 at the end. He was also genuinely friendly, taking us to see his house and family of nine, of whom he was very proud. It was pretty cool for us and it wasn't something he did very often, he said. He showed us the workings of the floating village, which looks quite poor in comparison to the splendour of the city and its mosques. There are enough schools and everyone gets government subsidies but I got the feeling that most of the wealth ain't here.

We were invited into our guide's home for some frozen strawberry drink
© Jeff Jones
Nice columns
© Jeff Jones

After we got back we checked out one of the main mosques near the centre of town. We couldn't go inside because it was prayer time but it was, to coin a famous prophet, bloody impressive. I was loving the colonnaded outdoor pool, too.

As we were wondering what to do next, we fell into conversation with another local tourist guide. He was waiting for an American woman who didn't show up, so we climbed into his car and he took us to see the rest of the sights of Bandar Seri Begawan. The highlight was the city's most expensive mosque which was lavish in every way with gold plated minarets, massive amounts of marble, fountains and so on. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and you get a pretty good idea of where the Sultan likes to spend his money. Something like this is amazing when you consider the size of the city and the country's population as a whole.

The most expensive mosque in South East Asia
© Jeff Jones

But wait, there's more. Not far away, the Sultan's palace has around 1100 rooms and houses a mosque that's even bigger than the one above. He opens his doors for three days a year to let the people in so that they can all meet and greet him. They're fed well and can take doggie bags home with them. Just like in a fairytale.

After cruising around some of the lesser palaces, the smallest of which was still enormous, we paid a visit to the night market. Here, you can buy any sort of food for a dollar, so four dollars (about £1.30) got me a large serving of noodles, some barbecue beef on a stick, a few cakes and a drink made from sugarcane. This place is popular with the locals, although there were a couple of other tourists there. The nice thing was that no-one was trying to flog us anything.

Night market
© Jeff Jones
It's all a dollar a serve
© Jeff Jones

A night in the Brunei Hilton followed, and after a less than inspiring English-style breakfast of cold baked beans, strange sausages and stale toast (how can toast be stale?) we headed back into town to take in the remaining tourist attractions. There weren't many. We started at the Regalia Museum, where we spent several hours in bare feet looking at all the presents that had been given to the Sultan at his coronation 40-odd years ago. The computers all looked as though they dated from the coronation too, as none of them were working. I did learn that Brunei had been part of a British protection racket in the 1800s. The Brits protected the Bruneians from piracy in exchange for one of their islands and the privilege to come and go as they choose. Brunei eventually gained independence in 1984, but Brits are still allowed to come here without a visa.

Finally, we got on another boat to go and see the proboscis monkeys up the river. They weren't exactly close enough to take good pics but it was an interesting trip nonetheless. The price magically went up from $30 to $50 by the time we got back so we didn't bother tipping this time.

My wildlife photography skills are improving, as you can see. This is a shot of proboscis monkeys.
© Jeff Jones

The big wet

After unsuccessfully arguing with the hotel manager about a late checkout, we sat in the lobby of the Brunei Hilton and waited until 9pm until a shuttle bus would take us out to the airport. It started to rain at about 5pm and tipped it down for the next three hours. This was a proper tropical thunderstorm and as we found out soon enough, caused flash flooding.

It was chaos on the way to the airport. Parts of the road were a couple of feet deep in water and people were getting stuck. On the dual carriageway, there were cars coming back towards us once they realised they couldn't continue. We made it to an exit and found our way to the airport. Our drivers reckoned that it had never flooded like this along these roads.

It goes without saying that Royal Brunei's computer system was down when we went to check in. I think they eventually did it on paper but it took bloody ages. They charged half of us departure tax as well, even though that was included in the booking. Someone asked for a receipt and was given the money back.

There were problems with visas as well. Olivier and Kristie didn't realise that Olivier needed a visa to get into Oz. Oops. Somehow, they managed to get one very quickly, despite the fact that the Australian embassy was shut. Then there were a couple of lost English kids. One of them presented his passport only to be informed that he was in Australia and had been since 1998. He'd never been to Australia.

It was pretty amazing that after all this, our flight was only an hour or so late, and we left at around 12:30am.

Then things started to go properly durian-shaped.

Aviation safety week

I already had a bad feeling about this flight, and my fears were confirmed pretty quickly. During the 'blessing of the flight', the Japanese guy next to me started praying. Then he just got up and left his seat, taking his satchel with him. I assumed he'd gone to the toilet, but he didn't come back.

We started taxiing and I considered mentioning this to the flight crew, but they had other concerns. The 'lavatory occupied' sign was still on as we took off and I was hoping that our would-be-bomber was merely suffering the effects of a dodgy curry.

After half an hour of flying I was just getting to the part of It's a Wonderful Life where George is contemplating suicide when the in flight entertainment froze and an announcement came over.

"Would all crew please report to the flight deck."

Now I had a really bad feeling about this, especially as we suddenly dropped 2000m, lost about half our speed, all the cabin lights were dimmed, and we'd turned around. Then the displays all went blank. So much for It's a Wonderful Life.

A little while later: "Would all crew please remain in your positions."

Then: "This is the captain speaking. We've had a technical problem but it's something that we're trained to deal with. We will be returning to Bandar Seri Begawan and should be landing in about 10-15 minutes. If you see any emergency vehicles on the runway, do not be alarmed. We will be evacuating, sorry disembarking the aircraft in the normal way."

It all went very quiet. We glided along at low power for 10-15 minutes but we weren't anywhere near landing. I wondered where our probable hijacker was taking us. I hoped he wasn't going to detonate his bomb before we arrived and I was still rather annoyed with myself for not mentioning it to the crew.

Another very long 15 minutes passed before we saw lights again. We got lower and lower and I thought we were going to land in someone's backyard, but the runway finally appeared and we touched down. It took us a long while to slow down. Thankfully, we didn't run out of runway and eventually came to a halt. Everyone clapped and there was some degree of relief in the cabin. Even among an arrogant party of Chinese up the back.

We filed back into the airport, were given temporary boarding passes and waited for instructions. At about 3am, we were told "The flight has been rescheduled for tomorrow at 9am. You will now be taken to hotels" without giving us an idea of how this was to take place. A few of us worked out that by the time we got to the hotel, it would be after 4 and we'd have to be back in a few hours to get on the plane. Not worth it, so most of us stayed in the terminal.

In the meantime, I learned that we weren't hijacked, it was merely a fractured windscreen. Haven't they heard of insulation tape?

I got one and a half hours sleep before being woken by the light and some awful muzak. We were promised breakfast but I'm thankful that we went to an airport coffee lounge instead, pooling all of our cash to buy some real food. Amy had only had a few oat biscuits since lunchtime the previous day, so she was a little peckish. Half decent coffee, muffins, scrambled eggs, toast - it was all good. The brekky provided by Royal Brunei consisted of stale cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, mediocre coffee and juice.

9am came and went and we were all sitting in the departure lounge, waiting. 9:30 and we get an announcement: "We're sorry for the delay, which is due to the lack of an operational crew."

Yes, you do need a pilot to fly a plane, and I don't blame last night's one for not coming back.

10am: "Your flight will be ready for boarding shortly. We're sorry for the delay, which is due to the lack of an operational crew. On behalf of Royal Brunei Airlines, we wish you a pleasant flight [giggles]"

I got the feeling that the level of training amongst the staff wasn't particularly high. You can't just throw it all together and expect it to work. You need some cohesion.

A rather disheveled and annoyed looking pilot did turn up and we finally got on the plane, an hour and a half later. As I got on board, I picked up a copy of the Brunei Times, where on page 2 they had a number of stories on Aviation Safety Week that was launched the previous day.

This time, I crossed my fingers when the in-flight blessing took place. We made it to Sydney, minus movies, and I was rather glad.

The next day I woke up with a stinker of a cold and the worst jetlag ever. I don't think I'll be flying Royal Brunei again.

Our first guide in Brunei
© Jeff Jones
This is wot keeps the village afloat
© Jeff Jones
Kiddies enjoying an afternoon swim
© Jeff Jones
Me and a mosque
© Jeff Jones
The Sultan prefers the escalator
© Jeff Jones
The boats run on Pepsi
© Jeff Jones
The family of our second river guide
© Jeff Jones
Two barges ready to take rocks upstream
© Jeff Jones
A slight detour on the way back
© Jeff Jones
Legend has it that this rock was a sunken boat
© Jeff Jones
Catching dinner
© Jeff Jones

Victory!

A full-on serious tea and coffee shoppe in Bath, at last!

Steve discovered it and took us there for one of our lunchtime tea stops. It's under the Oxalis tea shop in New Bond St and, for the time being, very inconspicuous. But when you go down into it, you realise it's something special. The walls are all painted white with locked cabinets containing various tea sets. It's like a museum!

The menu offers a massive range of teas and coffees. It looks pricey at first until you realise that each tea/coffee is for two people. I got a Brazilian Santos coffee, which has a delicious chocolatey flavour. It came in a plunger and I drank four and a half cups before it was empty. All for just £2.75. That's value, given that a medium black coffee from the Italian ice cream shop will cost £1.40 but you don't get the ambience. And I was very much awake in the afternoon.

I'm definitely going back and I hope it doesn't go broke before January next year. Because in the meantime, I will be in the land down under where women glow and men plunder. But I have to spend a day and a half in bloody Brunei because I got a cheap flight. Maybe I'll get to drive one of the sultan's 367 Ferraris.

It'll be nice to be in a county where the default weather isn't crap. That said, it did get up to 15° today - just like summer really. The problem was that it was raining at an angle that was close to horizontal. Quelle annoyance.

It was a good day to go out for a beer or five, which we of BikeRadar and WhatMTB and a bit of C+ did. The Bell, The Star, Lambrettas and almost The Huntsman but instead The Cellar were all patronised. It was just the thing to prepare for a three and a half day trip across the world.

Saturday bloody Saturday

Fortunately, it didn't end up too bloody here in the south west tropics of England. But it was an eventful day.

I'm talking, of course, about the Chippenham club run. Conditions: cold, windy, some rain and lots of puddles on the roads.

I was running a little late and the cemetery gates were deserted at 9:35. Another guy rolled up and said that we would never catch them, but I knew it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes and I've had plenty of practice in doing that on the Schelde ride.

I felt fine, despite a slow leak in the back tyre and trying not to drop the other guy, and caught the group after about 10km. But a few minutes later, there was an accident as the bunch tried to get around two cars that were parked on a blind corner while another car was coming the other way. Ben S didn't see the second parked car and went through the back windscreen, Davis Phinney style. Fortunately it was a low speed crash and he and his bike were completely unscathed - one of the advantages of wearing so many clothes during winter. The people who had foolishly parked their cars there were of Eastern European origin and a bit confused about what had happened. It took some time to exchange details before we got under way again. Ben had to report it to the police afterwards.

5km later, I decided that my rear tyre wasn't going to make it another 60km and stopped to change the tube, telling the rest to keep going. Luckily it started to rain again at that moment, otherwise there was the danger of me going soft. While pumping up the tyre in what felt like sleet, I did receive an offer of a free cup of tea from a real estate agent who was setting up for an inspection, but I declined, pleading insanity.

I didn't fancy my chances of catching up 12 minutes so I was surprised when I rejoined the bunch 25km later. It turned out the guy who I'd started with had also punctured, and they waited for him. Club president Andy Cook was also there, following us in the Everyday Cycling car to give us a bit more security. Andy's coming back from a broken collarbone that he sustained on the club run a few weeks back. Be careful, folks!

It was a headwind all the way back and everyone was a bit shattered by the time we got to Corsham. I foolishly followed windscreen Ben when he went hard with 2km to go and although I had the legs, it cost me dearly later on. I rode back to Bath with another guy, Pete, who had blown and I had to go fairly slowly to avoid leaving him. But as we went down Kingsdown I felt my own reserves run completely dry and within a kilometre, I was history. Normally I would have eaten something but there were only 4km to go so I thought I'd wait.

I was a shaking wreck by the time I got home. Significant quantities of food had to be ingested, followed by an hour and a half of quality time on the couch. To make matters worse, I then had to go shopping at Morrisons. But I made a curry, so it wasn't all bad.

Even better, I leave this rain sodden part of the world for a three week sojourn in Sunny Australia in a week. That'll be well good, innit.