Monthly Archives: October 2016

Cambridge Autumnal 100k Audax

The  Cambridge Autumnal 100k Audax was my 5th Audax ride this year, I so love these rides as they are far more relaxed than sportives, cost a lot less to enter and it feels like a real day out rather than a race to finish as quickly as possible and get home. The food is usually pretty good too !!

I was doing this Audax with 2 girlfriends, Jo and Gina,in fact it was Jo’s first Audax and the first one where i was in charge of the navigating, which did make me a little nervous, Unlike when walking I confess to not being able to follow the written route sheets on my bike so have to totally rely on my Garmin 1000.

The start was from Girton and a nice breakfast had been laid on for us so after booking in we enjoyed tea and toast before setting off , the organiser assured me the garmin route would be excellent but was happy to see that i also had a written route sheet just in case ,not that it would have helped me at all !!

img_4021The route was going to be  slightly undulating and take us through cambridgeshire suffolk and essex , with controls at Great Thurlow, Thaxted and Saffron waldron, then an information control at Balsham, the amazing thing is the TCX file was so good it told me at intervals how many km to control points and also told me when we had reached them and was always spot on .

It was a little hairy coming back through central Cambridge at 3pm but we made it without running over any suicidal shoppers who just walked straight out in front of you without even looking !!!

On our return we had a slap up meal consisting of vegetable chilli, cheese/ham rolls, lemon/toffee cake plus tea/coffee which we totally enjoyed while having a good  girlie chat

Next year I hope to move on to do some 200k Audaxes which I am sure Geoff will enjoy if he can stay in the country long enough !!

The Flower Of Suffolk

Its been a while since I did some real walking, I am usually put off due to the amount of travelling and cost, but yesterday I dusted off my walking boots, made the effort and was not disappointed.img_4002

The day started with a 2 hour drive to walberswick ,in pouring rain with Jo,where we met up with Gina and Jayne to walk The LDWA challenge walk ,the Flower of Suffolk, in the past Gina and I have walked the Daffodil Dawdle 26 miles and Jayne well she has now done 13 of the 100 mile events, while this was going to be the first taste of a challenge walk for Jo.

Luckily by the time we had met up,picked up our route sheet had a quick chat and coffee the rain had stopped and the sky was brightening up.

Although I can follow these walking routes, as we are chatting a lot !! it’s easy to lose your place so I decided to put the route on my garmin 1000 as a back up. Happy to say it worked very well fullsizerender-15especially as when we set off  Jayne just presumed we were doing the 26 miles…..

Once back on the 18 mile route the sun had decided to come out and greet us,and much fun was had as we found our way from check point to check point.

Walking through the heath at this time of year with the heathers, grasses and boardwalks is really beautiful, the route ended with a stretch along the beach too, shame my battery died on my camera.

The Marshalls at the checkpoints were all friendly and it was nice to see people I knew, the other fab thing about these LDWA challenge walks is the food, great food at every check point, then a bean and veg stew followed by crumble and custard when you finish.

A really great day out with great company lots of chat and giggles…….. and I must make more of an effort to do more walking, next year we will try to do all 3 challenge walks, The Daffodil Dawdle, The Poppy line and The Flower of Suffolk.