Ciao, Terrone Cowboy here in beautiful Kansas City, Kansas. I was living near the Litoranea Salento, in Italy until 2 weeks ago. Now I'm back home and trying to get my bike on the road again. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer and hope I can get your help. If you're interested in or planning to ride the Litoranea Salento, Calabria, Basilicata, or Sicilia, or take the ferry from Brindisi to Igoumenitsa Greece, perhaps I can help you or at least make some suggestions. Thanks for having me.
Here are some pictures of the James Bond bridge from the last movie. I looks a lot bigger in the film. It's in a place called "Gravina in Puglia". A very nice place to visit for riding and sightseeing.
Thanks very much. I posted some, pics of the James Bond bridge from the last movie. I'm not sure where they belong, so feel free to move them.
This had been scheduled for yesterday since May, talked about for much longer. The route was based on a Sportive called the Wiltshire 100, it just happened to conveniently pass relatively close to my house. Bob my cycling partner for the day had ridden the route some years previously. I’d never cycled with Bob before, but we had ridden motorcycles together and holidayed a number of times and our Strava rides indicated similar abilities/speeds. The previous weekend I’d ridden my bicycle on three consecutive days. Saturday 18 miles, Sunday 18 miles followed by 67 on the Bank Holiday Monday. On the Saturday evening I’d replaced the valve core and refreshed the sealant on my slow leaky rear tyre had it had been no further problem. On the morning of the big ride, nearly a week later I had to top up both tyres but thought nothing of it. We left 15 minutes earlier than our plan and all was good until Amesbury where i realised my rear needed a top up, which I did with my mini hand pump. We got to Upavon and it needed another, at Pewsey after coffee and cake another top up, in the end it seemed every 8-10 miles it needed attention, somewhere I tried changing the core, but they appeared to have different threads. We called in at The Marlborough bike shop, who Bob had used before they looked at it and at my suggestion changed the valve core and as there was no obvious leak suggested I change the rim tape later. As the tyre was properly inflated it lasted a lot longer, but still leaked. As forecast by the Met it started to rain, we 60 miles in and near Devizes, time for lunch at the highly recommended Rowdey Cow. The Sausage ciabatta was excellent. I topped up the rear as we were leaving, in the village of Keevil I topped up again and thought it hadn’t lost as much air, wrong ! Only a few miles later somewhere near Steeple Ashton it gave up, in the rain. We found a gateway, removed the wheel and fitted a TPU tube, that bit was easy. Inexplicably my pumps hose would not screw onto the valve stem, luckily Bobs did, this needs investigation. Then as we were approaching Westbury Bob asked me to follow and look at his rear tyre, it was slowly losing pressure so once again we pulled over and he changed his tube. Raining constantly, but not hard the roads had lots of standing water, the light was failing we carried on, there was a route anomaly near Upton Scudamore after a brief look at Google maps we were off again. After crossing the A350 nr Warminster it occurred to me we would be close to friends who had a track pump, we dripped into Sarah’s garage who offered us hot drinks towels and the pump. We declined the hot drinks but dried ourselves a bit and inflated our tyres. Amazing difference between 40 and 75 psi. With spirits buoyed we fair raced along, partly because of the brief stop, correctly inflated tyres and Warminster saw us back on the almost flat familiar NCN 24. We stopped briefly outside the almost always closed Ginger Piggery where I realised this is going to be over a 100 miles and why is our elevation significantly less than the route. At Wylye my Garmin and Bobs Beeline was telling us to turn right up to the reservoir, not a chance we carried on to Wilton and home. We met Kaitlin running through Burcombe, everyone was soaked. 105 miles, 4,682 ft, 7 hours 20 minutes moving time, 9 hours 45 out of the house. Who would have thought this 61 yo, overweight bloke could ride that far, certainly not me. Thanks Bob.
