Tank Park Salute

First news from the treatment room. As you will see from his latest blog, my cycling chum is actually not a happy Bunny. In fact, so much so that he has been forced to bail from our great Pyrenean adventure in August. I had hoped to be able to keep up with him a bit more  than usual, but it is not to be, and to be honest, it is worse for him than for me.

If you know of anyone with a juvenile sense of humour (around 13-15 works best), who doesn't mind sharing a room with a dramatic, untidy hypochondriac (that's me by the way), and who also has nothing better to do than cycle from Biarritz to Argeles Sur Mere in the last week of August, and can put up with a lot of faffing, and I mean a lot, then point them in my direction.

The second bit of news is that my neck is much improved, although playing football, hanging on the shoulder of the last defender and looking backwards all night, has not helped. I hope it is two steps forward and one back, rather than the other way around.

Now, to business. The Wiggle Jurassic Beast to be precise. Which I rode yesterday, and what a splendid day out it was. The aim was to replace last week's aborted ride with a long ride out on my own, preferably in nice weather. And I think I succeeded all all three counts:

• Long, in that it was a shade under 100 miles (99.4, and no I didn't cycle round the block to make it up to 100, I trying to resist that behaviour), and lasted 6 hours 42 minutes with all stops, 6 hours 24 with, and had about 6000 feet of climbing in it
• Alone, but definitely not lonely, because there were hundreds of people either passing me (not that many) or being passed by me (only in the latter stages when we caught up with the short and medium routers). And besides the countryside was gorgeous.
• Nice weather? About time, just about perfect cycling weather, mild, breezy, sunshine and cool.

Charlie Garmin let me down by completely freezing and failing to record anything. So here is a link to the organisers route. Right from the get go the route was fabulous. The ride started at the national tank museum at Bovington camp, which was a bit surreal, hundreds of cyclists, surrounded by dozens of tanks dotted about the place. There were a few more on the roads leading away from the museum, as the area is still home to many tank regiments, not to mention their training grounds.

The connections continued, for this great man was also based nearby when he was in the military, and bought his famous house, Clouds Hill, which is now owned by the National Trust, which we passed after a mile or so. Even spookier was cycling past the spot where he was killed, exactly 77 years ago to the day.

And my number for the day? 6777. Spookier and spookier.

The route continued through a forest, resplendent with bluebells, wild garlic and so quiet you could hear birds singing to their hearts content. By now I was on my own, and I studiously avoided company for the most part, wanted to do it on my own.

Despite being called the Jurassic Beast, much of the long route was into the heart of inland rural Dorset, through the picturesque Milton Abbas and up, then down, then up, and then down Bulbarrow Hill. Despite the fine conditions there were a few twisty, tricky descents with lots of gravel and water still about. From there it was onto the rolling plains, round the back of the Cerne Abbas Giant without having the opportunity to stand and gawp!

The route then headed south east, and I took advantage of a large farm truck to pull me up one of the many inclines, drafting not cheating, of course. I was now on territory I'd cycled before, it's part of Day 2 of the Tour of Wessex, and heads down to Lulworth cove, and up onto the ridges around Isle of Purbeck. And there are a lot of those ridges, and the route seemed to pick every one of them quite gratuitously, even if it meant committing the heinous crime of doubling back or crossing over itself.

Somewhere near Corfe Castle we merged with a charity cycle event, also with a mix of routes, and rider of all shapes, types and bikes. The potential for mix-ups was huge, but eventually I found myself going up when they were going down, and vice versa. Going past Corfe Castle for the second time, I knew I was in the right place.

Once past the castle, there was just one major hill and a few small draggy climbs left before I was back at Bovington. I found out later that I had missed a gold standard time by 4 minutes, but you know what? I really, really don't care. I really enjoyed myself and to do the course as a solo rider in the time I did, whilst enjoying it thoroughly too, was a real delight.

Less delightful are my pink arms. Despite remembering to cover my face in sun cream I thought my arms would be tough enough not to burn. Very wrong. I also forgot chamois cream, but as i stayed at my parents' house I discovered that Nivea cream is an OK substitute, just!