Cloudy Grippy Saturday

03:49

51.7km

13.6km/h

37.2km/h

1,070m

1,090m

Usual early ride to the train station, this time heading to Guildford.

I started at 6:30 at the beginning of my route. The sky already looked amazing, and I kept stopping to take photos — it’s just part of my riding, I guess. This time the views were truly stunning; you can see for yourself if you like them too.

Not far from town, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, I saw lights and people standing around with head torches. I had no idea what was going on — thieves planning something? Walkers heading out early?

As I got closer, I said good morning and chatted with one of them. It turned out to be an ultra trail running event: 100 miles, and even some 200 miles. He pointed to two guys standing on their own and said, “Those ones are not the 100-milers — they’re something else.”
This was a feeding station stop, which explained the crowd.

I left them behind and soon joined one runner going uphill, chatting as we went. He had started at 2 p.m. on Friday; it was just before 7 a.m., and he had only 12 miles to go. Not bad at all.

I’d finally fitted new tyres, and the grip was absolutely brilliant 🤩. I had so much fun and felt so confident on the bike — no sliding side to side at all. Maybe a bit too much pressure, though, so I stopped to let some air out. I unscrewed the valve core fully for a second together with cap, screwed it back quickly… and of course had to pump the wheel again anyway. Silly me.

As soon as I reached the edge of the Surrey Hills, the views were insane: inversion, clouds, sun — straight out of a postcard.

I sent a photo to the wider family whatsapp group and asked them to guess my height above sea level on picture for a prize. Guesses came in at 700, 900, even 1,400 metres. After I hinted that I was in the UK — where the highest point is only 1,345 m — and that the real height would be “surprisingly laughable,” the winning guess was 135 m.
Actual height: around 120 m above sea level.

It was a beautiful morning — sunny, incredible views, what’s not to like?

Power numbers and everything else were high too, not intentionally, just a really good grip i say as i pushed on flat and hills.

Cane out of bushes and onto Whitedown Lane, steep road climb i did not long ago.
i was not ready fir this today but climb without any issues.

Coming back into Guildford offered another above-the-clouds view, town was covered by a clouds.
Once I dropped into town it turned low-visibility, cloudy, and cold, what a day.