February 1st 2012

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February 1st 26-29F, -3-2C, windy, sunny, cold. Freezing cold NE wind. I don't mind the cold but the wind forces me to overdress. My nose feels like an icicle while my body is sweating. After a failed attempt at double vests I'm back down to a thin poly vest, racing jersey and Aesse jacket. Racing shorts and light or medium poly tights. Doubled woolly socks and neoprene overshoes. Sweaty 40oz Thinsulate gloves and my Abus U-lane helmet. Usually over a Thinsulate tea-cosy hat. I have both double Thinsulate and single thickness hats. The latter is more useful for windproofing than warmth but feels very cold under the helmet.

Wind chill chart borrowed from the DMI website.
(click for a larger version)
Mph = m/s x 2.2. Or Kmt/1.61 50kmt~=30mph.

The -5C column usually applies at the moment. Though it dropped to -8, -10 and two days of -13 only a few days later.  

Notice the effect of any wind on the effective temperature. Now imagine going downhill into a stiff wind at -5C. I have been outside at -23C with a very gentle breeze. No fun at all! I would never consider riding in such low temperatures. My lowest starting temperature to date was -15C in almost still conditions with bright sunshine. I can still almost remember the pain in my toes and fingers and face. A good 30mph downhill run at -15C would be the equivalent of -40C in still air. The pain in my face is awful even at much lower speeds. Yet I can't cover my face and breathe at the same time. Only a balaclava with a large mouth opening and nose cover would help to avoid icing and steaming up my ski goggles.

My daily temperature readings are taken from a a digital thermometer with an outside sensor on a long lead. The outside sensor is in free air in shadow about 15' above the ground. I have checked it against another and they agree to within a small fraction of a degree. I check the temperature just before leaving and just after I come back.

During this -3-5C cold spell I usually started out with my thin, windproof, Giordana, day-glo, jogging jacket over the Aesse until I warm up. This doesn't usually take long due to the many hills on all my possible routes.

My thin, poly balaclava is handy to keep my ears and neck warm but reduces beneficial ventilation around the neck. It is also rather tight and squashes my ears. My head seems to be the main culprit in overheating when I have too many layers. A Thinsulate double thickness hat with ear flaps would be better than the balaclava under a tea-cosy. My only ear-flap hat is double fleece and very thick. It wont (remotely) go under the Abus helmet.

With cycling, it's always a fine balance between comfort, being too cool and overheating. All due to the highly variable exercise going on inside the clothing. The wind is most difficult factor to cope with due to wind chill of poorly protected extremities. This year and the whole of the last has been ridiculously windy but relatively dry.

All of my cycling jackets and racing jerseys have come from charity shops scattered over a very wide area. Most visits draw a complete blank but (far more importantly) they offer suitable goals for further exploration on the trike.

All part of my oversized, psychological saddle bag of cheap tricks to con myself keep me going out on the trike. Particularly when common sense suggests (another) rest day. Rest days only lead to more. Before I know it I shall be sitting at home. Probably planning the  investment of time and money, which I don't really have, in another of my countless hobbies.

Tricycling has arguably kept me fit and alive when my high blood pressure was a constant worry. The cost of lifelong drugs to treat the problem would be much better spent on woolly socks and new inner tubes. So it was. I haven't measured my blood pressure for a couple of years. Nor do I eat Danish pastries any more. We never ate or drank much in the way of non-food items anyway.

Apart from the expense, if I bought all new cycling clothing I would greatly resent less than 1000% perfection. Nothing less would do for the incredibly high prices demanded for cycling gear. The majority of which is probably produced by child-slave labour in a sweat-shop somewhere in the Far East. My gear may even be considered slightly out-dated by those who regularly spend £250 on their cycling sunglasses. My under a fiver (<£5) clothing covers most of my needs except for breathable waterproofing in heavier rain. The rest of my stuff comes from supermarkets and discount chain stores. Bargains are to be had almost everywhere for the patient buyer.

It sounds completely daft but I'd rather be relatively poor than very rich. I would hate the boredom of being so wealthy that I could afford to satisfy every whim. It would be hell on earth for me! So many useless possessions! The sense of anticipation would be completely absent. The effort that goes into the search and research before a rare purchase can be almost tasted. I thrive on bargains. Hate keeping up appearances for their own sake.

 A homesick Mr Higgins insists on being photographed on the wrong left side of the road.

Imagine having to own a BMW or Audi because it is expected of you? Is there any worse fate than this? Imagine clumsily damaging an older car in a supermarket car park with your "posh ride". Simply because you are too damned careless to bother about your pathetic driving skills? Then telling the owner/victim that it doesn't really matter because it's an old car? This has happened to me three times in the past few years. I couldn't live with that mindset. Have they no pride at all?


My remarkable cycling wardrobe means a new, fairly tidy and completely different appearance on most days of the year. I like the variation and it adds another item to the vital list of reasons to go out. The "nutter on the trike" thus feels part of the cycling fraternity. Even when he is chugging along at half the speed of those similarly dressed. While often pushing three times the dead (mechanical) weight uphill and down.  (and usually feeling superior about it as he gets dropped as if riding backwards)

Having the right cycling clothing is not so much about appearance as comfort. For the most part it works and works damned well! A cotton T-shirt under a fleece jacket topping a pair of cut-off jeans must be about the worst choice of cycling outfit on the planet. Yet some people never even try the correct attire. They think they look cool when they are anything but. Or freezing their nuts off screaming downhill after getting up a good sweat on the long climb. 

It would be so incredibly easy just to get in the car and do a week's shopping. Instead of which I am forced to enjoy a daily change of weather, season and scenery, fresh air and quite daft amounts of exercise for an "old codger." I'm a couple of months shy of normal retirement age. I'm also far fitter than many people of half my age. Regular visits to the quack are now a very distant memory. I thus avoid burdening the system (and my own) unnecessarily.

A nice hill looms. The camber on the corner is extreme!

Mr Higgins takes it all in his stride.

I see different people almost every day. The trike is an ice-breaker and often leads to a chat outside a supermarket. They say most old people are lonely these days. If the trike gives them an excuse to exchange a couple of words for the first time in weeks then why not? I don't usually start conversations but I always talk to any dogs, horses and cats I might pass. Well, you have to, don't you?

I grin at everybody who stares at me. Okay, I sport an extra wheel. Deal with it! I gently greet, wave or smile at most passing cyclists. How else will they know I am eccentric but still safely normal? Better three wheels than one short of a set! Trikes are infinitely more sensible than a mono-cycle. Far safer than two wheels on icy surfaces.

Looking back down the hill. 
The Trykit 2WD makes child's play of climbing on snow. 
The photographer makes a childish mistake with the clumsy foreground.

Living rural-detached I would otherwise see nobody except my long-suffering wife. Chief Laundress, Head Gardener and learned council all rolled up into a small, neat bundle. My absence, on my daily rides, gives her time to relax and think up new reasons to nag me when I finally struggle home again. I can even stretch out the daily riding experience to blogging and photography. Though this often means even more time rattling away on the computer. Only 16 miles and all this chat? It hardly seems justification enough to be going out. But at least you have been given some clues as to why I do.

I went through hell to get fitter, lighter and better. If a lazy sod like me can do it then, probably, so can you. The downside is that you could end up addicted to riding an old racing trike uphill and down dale in all weathers. Then nattering about it endlessly on a blog. But, surely, there are far, far worse fates that that!

Just around the corner the climb continues for about 3/4 of a mile.

It seems easiest to climb on the freshly fallen snow.

Otherwise the lightly loaded front wheel slides about more.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

25th January 2012

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25th 22-31F, -6-1C, still and clear. I set off about 9.00 (-5C) in bright sunshine to reach a distant supermarket. I wore heavier ski underwear but it was really too much and I sweated. My hands were warm in the 40 oz Thinsulate gloves today. As were my toes in two pairs of woolly socks and overshoes. Perhaps the thicker underwear was keeping my extremities warm? Perhaps it was the gentle tailwind?
 
The bike computer packed up every time I took my eye off it. Then the i-GotU GPS logger didn't record anything. Just to add to the fun the Ventus logger recorded only 35 miles!?! Which seems far too short. I'll have to check the distance on Google Earth. Not that this is particularly easy because I follow winding, minor lanes and roads across country to avoid traffic.

I punctured at halfway on a farmer's art installation of oversized rocks beside a busy main road! Who would use a tractor to rake his gravel verge and leave the cycle path completely covered in golf ball sized gravel? Answers on a postcard, please, to:

I was breaking chunks of ice out of my beard before going into the shops! On the way back there was a perishing cold, head wind. I ate only a banana and four cookies since my 7am breakfast. So I was getting rather tired towards the end.

Google, Blogspot and Firefox are all conspiring against me on the editing (again) !! I have reset the pictures and surrounding text five times and each time it reverts to the wrong spacing!!! I'll fix it in html editing when I have the patience. Make that 8 times including html editing! Ten times and now it is resizing images as it goes along!!  P'raps I've been hacked? :-)

Today's dawn captured by my wife on her old Sony P71.

The cells of light looked just like molten lava.

26th 28-33F, -2+1C, clear but windy! Forecast to hover around freezing all day with 20mph steady wind speeds and gusts to 30mph. Supposedly clouding over after early sun. Should be interesting.

It wasn't. The trees were already thrashing about before I left at 9.30. Fierce gusts from the side had me hiding under the handlebars in my balaclava and skiing goggles. (which I hadn't needed before today)

My nose felt like an ice block and the wind was coming from all directions. Though it was helping me along at other times. I had no choice where I was going because I had an appointment. The wind really picked up when I got there. With leaves and dust blowing up in swirls and whistling around the buildings.

On the way back it was pure misery. I must have had 30lbs or 15 kilos of shopping on board. It filled four large carrier bags as I unloaded it all back at home. Most of it was solid or liquid. The wind was playing harmonics in higher octaves as it whistled through my brake levers.

My quadriceps were on fire at 6mph in bottom gear on the flat some of the time! Where the few field hedges still clung to existence it was fine. I could do 10-12mph without effort. My Aesse jacket was wet inside when I took it off! At least the sun stayed out. So that's all right then.  Perhaps I need a rest day to recover my strength? Overnight snow is forecast but the amount and length of snow showers is shrinking all the while. 21 miles today.

27th 29F, -2C, still windy, 2" (50mm) of snow lying, overcast with a little more snow forecast. A rest day? I have just walked along to have a look at the road. It has been salted but the road is much narrowed with raised ridges of filthy slush. This tends to dam up puddles which would give me a nasty soaking as cars struggle to get past. My leg muscles are quite tender in places when I massage them.  As the wind is still gusting to 30mph I've probably talked myself out of going out today. My last rest day was the 28th of December. Hi, my name is Chris. I'm a trikeoholic. I haven't had a ride for 24 hours. One day at a time. :-)

28th 30F, -1C, breezy, overcast finally clearing to weak sunshine. I'm going out after coffee. Can't feel any pain in my legs now. The roads were fairly clear but it made no difference anyway. On a trike with 2WD one just continues regardless of the surface conditions. I heard a loud bang when I ran over some frozen slush on the main road  but the tyre stayed up. I stayed off the cycle path after that.

Though sunny, the wind was very cold. My fingers and toes were fine but I was overheating again due to wearing two skiing vests. I really don't think it helps. I saw a couple of bullfinches in the hedges. Chaffinches are by far the most common birds I see. Even outnumbering sparrows. With blackbirds probably third. Only 16 miles.

29th 28F, -2, overcast, snowing steadily, light breeze. Yesterday's forecast has been completely changed to snow all day. At least another inch has fallen overnight. I have to go out anyway and consider the car an inferior tool for the purpose in these conditions. It's not a lack of experience driving on snow. I used to go looking for snow-covered country roads to practice my driving skills in the UK.

The problem is always the fear that any oncoming vehicle will lose control. I have seen so many cars leave the Danish roads that I no longer trust their skills. They make absolutely no allowances for weather conditions. Fitting winter tyres is normal here. Typically drivers then assume that they are now perfectly safe under any road conditions.

They continue to drive above the legal speed limit. They still drive nose to tail. Overtake without a care in the world. Only to end up on their sides or upside down on the verge. Or in a field. A phone call to the private rescue services and the car is soon gone. Or they hit some innocent soul head-on and another family tragedy makes just a line or two in the local paper.

I had to mend a puncture before I could go out. Obviously caused by that lump of frozen slush on the cycle path yesterday! It snowed continuously until I returned home 10 miles later. I should have worn my skiing goggles to keep the snow out of my eyes but had opted for the yellow sunglasses.

It was easiest to ride on the fresh snow. As it wasn't so slippery as the compressed car tracks. No problems with traction up or down hill. Coming back on the main road is was watery slush between ridges. It threw up quite a spray from the front tyre all the way home. Oh, the luxury of proper mudguards on a day like this! A moron in a Volvo brushed past at 60mph. Giving me a free shower of filthy wet. There was nothing coming the other way. So he could have used the whole road. The I-gotU GPS logger has failed to record for two days in a row now.

These are typical road conditions at the moment. Isn't it odd how difficult to it is to capture the slopes of hills with a camera? This shot is looking down quite a steep hill. I walked some distance up the hill and used a lot of zoom to try and show the incline, but failed. Mr Higgins is actually standing well below my camera position but looks slightly higher. 

I have now added +2/3 to EV on my Panasonic Lumix TZ7 camera and am much more pleased with the results. I usually have to add gamma and contrast in PhotoFiltre to every image I use. Not any more.

I have been trying out Wordpress to see if I could move my blog over when Google invades the world next month. Wordpress is so greedy you would not believe it! It is impossible to even change background colours on the free service. Pay another $30 dollars to change minor details? Pay another $30 to rid the blog of adverts?  Buy this domain name or that. Pay to own a blog template? Pay this. Pay that. Talk about hard sell! This is the best I could do on a shoestring:

Upright-trikes

It's no wonder Google bought Blogger and Picasa. Now nobody can opt out of their global domination. At least I could delete my Facebook account. (or so I hope) It just didn't inspire me to do anything useful with it. So if anyone notices my absence (unlikely) you know where I am. Probably still blogging by candlelight in a cellar somewhere. While constantly checking over my shoulder that the jackbooted Google Gestapo aren't coming down the drive. In an armoured personnel carrier plastered in tasteless advertising. The Chinese could easily afford to buy Google and Facebook. The next thing you know it's back to the Dark Ages. What has this to do with triking? Not a lot.

"Gates" likes these found at the entrance to many Danish villages. Probably intended as a psychological narrowing of the road to try to reduce speeding. The 1056' 321m Brylle TV mast is just visible in the centre background. I deliberately stood in the middle of the road to place the mast between the trees. The Danish flag on the right shows how hard the wind is blowing. The fields "smoke" fine snowdrifts across the roads in the absence of hedges. 

Mr Higgins is further laden with two large carrier bags in addition to the large saddle/sports bag. I simply tie the plastic bags by their strong handles to the saddle frame with thick, nylon cord. Netto's large carrier bags are excellent quality and last for months of such abuse. Probably about as long as the sports/saddle bags themselves. I'm lucky to get six months of use out of a sports bag. So I usually buy them in charity shops and discard them when they wear out. 

The carrier bags are limited to light, bulky items like toilet rolls, lettuce, bread rolls and sliced loaves. Heavier items like tins, jars and the daily collection of organic milk cartons go into the sports/saddle bag. A fellow cyclist had a brand new carrier bag rupture and spill its shopping onto the car park outside a supermarket. I suggested he invest in Netto carrier bags. He looked at me as if I was insane! His loss. I've never had a Netto carrier bag fail on me yet. :-)

Many larger sports bags are far too long to fit between the rear wheels of the trike. So I carefully select shorter bags with a very deep box section to maximise my carrying capacity. One cloth handle is strapped to the rucksack frame with Ty-wraps. The free handle is lifted over the saddle to be supported by the saddle pin once the bag is loaded and zipped up. 

The free, cloth handle is lifted back over the nose of the saddle to allow easy unloading. The handle usually covers the zips of the sports bag so there is an added sense of security when the trike is left unattended. 

Daily practice over the last two years has proved my bag system works very effectively. Particularly since I fitted the cut-down rucksack frame using plumbing clips. I ought to shorten the frame to give some support to the bottom pf the bag but there aren't enough cross rails for my support clips if I raise the frame. I keep looking, in the charity shops, for another ultra-lightweight rucksack frame. One with more cross rails, but no luck so far.

My rear carrier

30th 26-31F,-3-1C, windy, clear and sunny. I organised my route to match the wind direction quite well until the last couple of miles. I was riding mostly on thin powdery stuff. The sun and salt had combined to wet the roads in places. In others there was a couple of inches of windblown snow. Always where the hedges had been removed by farmers. A steady stream of snow was being thrown forwards by the front tyre and balling around the brakes. In the thicker places the snow was flying sideways out of the front mudguard all over my overshoes and long, woolly socks.

Despite forgetting my biscuit snack (again) I kept going for 28 hilly miles in these snowy conditions. The cheapo bike computer kept stopping but both GPS loggers worked today. Toes and fingers were fine but I was too warm in the double vests. The Head Gardener will insist that I wrap up warm! She thinks that if she is could then I must be too.

The forecast is for much colder weather with more snow. My wife and I tried to finish the last yard of trench for the optical fibre broadband. We had put it off because the trench kept flooding. We found the topsoil was frozen literally as hard as rocks! We were eventually able to undermine the frozen stuff and lift it out in large clumps. Job done ready for the final installation. The frozen soil and gravel from the drive will have to wait for a thaw. So we can tidy things up afterwards. I tried using the miner's pick on it but it would not budge. The point barely marked the surface! I wonder if I'm getting enough exercise?

31st 25-29F, -4-2C, windy, clear and sunny. It's been a busy day. The fibre optic broadband installer arrived first. 35/33mBit/s. Not bad for a 30/30 service. The techician was competent, professional and polite. I had to open a new network to get my machine to recognise the new service. It was only a matter of minutes before I was live again. My old service was 4/0.4mBit/s. So I have an 8x faster download and over 60x faster upload. YouTube videos taken only a couple of minutes to upload instead of over 40 minutes!



Then I had to ride into Assens for the 2nd silo demolition. It was supposed to be at 11.30 but after several false starts it was well over an hour late. Lots of people gave up and went home. It was freezing! -3C with a 20mph wind gusting higher. Fortunately my wife had insisted I take a duvet jacket to put on or I'd have given up too. Riding home afterwards, against the cold wind, was 'orrible!

Finally I had to go and collect my car from the workshop. The rear end had been damaged by a moron in a car park shunt. His insurance had accepted full liability. 20 miles. 
 

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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23rd Jan cont'd 2012

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23rd cont'd: It was getting rather long. I'll decorate the latest rant with some pretty pictures to take your minds off my monologue. :-)

A frosty landscape
The huge flock of birds resting on the valley floor are lost at this scale. As were the next row of "windmills" behind those on the horizon.

 A typical sign found at the entrance to every Danish town, city and village.  The "now entering a built up area" sign is for the 99% of (apparently) illiterate drivers who do not recognise the numerical symbols for 50kph (30mph) as usually found on "lollipop" signs.

And the obverse. To remind the 99% of drivers, who are probably already exceeding 80kph(50mph) that they may now legally increase their speed to the national rural speed limit of 80kph. It goes without saying that speeding is a national sport. The absence of rural, police patrol cars, or speed cameras, makes the risk of being caught rather unlikely.

In a very odd way, I think this is quite a good thing. Better a low crime, no police society. Rather than one riddled with crime and a police car on every street. One just wished that the average motorist's driving skills, at speed, matched their remarkable ambitions. At least they aren't remotely as bad as the British!

Gentrified thatch in superb condition.

Most Danes, arriving in Britain, must think they have died on the ferry and gone to traffic hell! I'd give the average Danish pedestrian five minutes before their life is snatched cruelly away. Or severely threatened at the very first junction or pedestrian crossing. Waddya mean the traffic should stop and wait for them as prescribed by law? And which was taught to them in kindergarten!! (Dansk: Børnehave= children's garden = pron: burn-uh-hayve-uh) Most Danish kids attend Børnehave since both parents usually work.

Danish pedestrians have real rights! Which they take as an absolute right! So much so that Danish pedestrians rarely bother to give the patient motorist so much as a glance at a junction or crossing. They know exactly and instinctively when the pedestrian has the right of way.

They stroll across just as they were taught to in their infant years. Learning their inalienable rights as they take their daily toddle beside the børnehave institution's prams. While wearing their multicoloured, padded one-piece suits. I still laugh every time I see them. Even after 15 years! They look so like comical, Disney cartoon characters. And, they are perfectly disciplined by the age of 3! 

And, without resort to violence or even the threat of as much. Such a far cry from the British pedestrian anarchy: The: "Behave! Or I'll slap your legs!" teaching method of the fictitious British Highway Code. They were still showing government/taxpayer sponsored road safety TV ads before I left the UK. What a deplorable admission of failure!

 

Prehistoric earthworks. Probably a fortified village.

Most Danish cyclist have extraordinary riding skills compared with most British cyclists. The Danish child is taught to ride on the road beside their parents at the age of 3 or 4. Yet they would really struggle to survive for the first few days on the bloody streets of Britain. Simply because they would be quite unprepared for the psychopathic aggression, blind selfishness, awful manners and murderous impatience (and intent) of the average British motorist. Worse, they would be completely unprepared for the total ignorance and subsequent denial of all cyclist's rights. Ignorance of the law is no excuse in a British court. It's arguably the reason for so many coroner's hearings.

Even the average Danish "white van man" has fully fledged wings and an invisible halo compared with the typical, fire breathing, genocidal-suicidal, British, caveman brute, of the type.

Too much contrast for the camera to handle. I tried to rescue it in PhotoFiltre but even the obscuring hedges were against my getting a decent shot. The old tree was truly magnificent. Even when bereft of leaves. The thatched farmhouse retains its privacy.

After a day of minor skirmishes with the Danish traffic I have only to watch the helmet cam videos of British cyclists on YouTube. To remind myself of my decades of cycling over there. Yet, miraculously, somehow I survived to tell the tale! Now I should give daily thanks that I'm now in traffic heaven! Without having paid the usual entry fee. :-)

A posh, organic farm with its own shop.

One slight oddity, with the normally polite Danes, is their unwillingness to give way to another motorist. Even to allow somebody else to pull out of the last parking place in Denmark! So that they might (effortlessly) take their place. But no. They prefer to drive very slowly past and then go several times around the entire city looking for an empty parking spot. Rather than let that one car release the temporary, car park, gridlock.

At side junctions, even when caught in an endless queue on the main road, they will usually close the gap. Rather than let even one car cross the queue to turn into the opposite lane. It is inexplicable but true. Perhaps they think they are still little pedestrians taking their right of way?

The British may well be raving psychopaths (and madwomen) behind the wheel. But they are still willing to allow some poor sod to escape the misery of being stuck in a side road. You'd think it would occur to them (the Danes) that: There, but for the grace of ... go I.

If I ever went back to Blighty I'd want an armoured personnel carrier. With live ammunition and an armed, police convoy as escort! A few marines as back up wouldn't go amiss in case we run into a case of British road rage. :-)

Timber-framed thatch guarding the remarkable gates of a village church.

24th 25-30F, -4-1C, still, clear. Another hard, white frost. The sun came up at 8:40 and stayed bright in a cloudless sky. There were a lot of geese and Whooper swans flying around in huge circles over the open countryside. What a racket the swans made!

Today I wore two pairs of medium weight wool socks and my feet were warmer. I now wear the neoprene overshoes below 35F as a matter of course.

If you really want to test the effects of wind chill just hop on a bike at below freezing! Forward motion in still air is enough to freeze the bare skin quite quickly. Now add the slightest breeze and the effective temperature plummets! Now do it going downhill into the wind! Clothing which is perfectly comfortable at only slightly higher temperatures becomes almost worthless. Usually because it is too porous to air movement through the vital, windproof outer shell.

Rural, wooded bliss on "pheasant alley."

Usually, Thinsulate 40oz gloves are just about usable (on a bike) at -3C. They struggle to keep my hands warm unless I wrap my finger around the tops of the bars. The idea is to keep them out of the direct draught. If I expose my gloved fingers, by holding the brake levers, it's the agony of frozen fingers!

The main clothing problem is breathability. While retaining  perfect windproofing. Finding the combination of both (and some useful shower proofing to boot) seems very expensive indeed. Forget all about coated nylon waterproofs. You will sweat like a sauna with the slightest exercise.

Better to put a newspaper inside your jumper or jacket if you find yourself without adequate windproofing on a cold day. Only a single sheet, or two, will do. Racing cyclists have used this trick for decades. I did myself when I started commuting 15 miles to work back in the 60s. And 15 miles, back again after a day spent on my feet.  I used to go out in the lunch hours too. Just to get a few more miles in.

Boring as hell, but it fills an empty space.
Try pretending that the wind turbines are holding up the sky.

Back then the "new" proofed nylon anoraks were being pushed by the likes of Blacks of Greenock for climbing. I invested in a bright orange one and sweated horribly for the next decade. Both on the hills, on the bus and on the bike or trike. Awful things for cycling or climbing even when faded with wear. Once one's clothing was wet against the skin there was no way to dry out again! Not without going into a warmed building. Preferably taking off your wet poly underwear as well. Try finding a warmed building in the Welsh hills. Or in the middle of Dartmoor! 

The most serious problem for cyclists (in cold conditions) is achieving high levels of windproofing without extra warmth. Cut off the wind and you don't need much extra warmth from your clothing. Your heavy exercise will usually provide all the warmth you need. Particularly when hill climbing. If you start sweating on a climb get the jacket open ASAP and take off any warm head wear. You owe it to yourself to avoid that hot, then icy cold, wet back! Once your back is cold it must be really wet. It will takes miles to get comfortable gain. If you ever do.

A smart old house still wearing its thatch with pride.

Since the air temperature is low you'd think that you could just keep adding fleece jackets. Which is what I did in my first cold, Danish, cycling winter. The trouble is the bod in the middle. Sweating into the polyester underwear. Thin poly underwear  does a great job of keeping sweat-induced moisture away from the skin. But it does have its limits. No amount of fleece jackets will keep you warm for long in cold and windy conditions. Okay, if you just want to stand around in still cold air. Not if you are moving. Better to wear down filled clothing if you want to stay really comfortable in one spot. Or on a slow walk in the winter sunshine. Keep your core temperature up and your extremities should stay warm too.

30 miles today. I had to do a ten mile detour. Because there was no bread in stock at the first supermarket! Grrr?

I had to use a lot of zoom to bring this windmill into the picture from across the valley. 

Losing two more at the same time. I like wind turbines.

 

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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