Well, the day has finally arrived! No, not Christmas Eve, the start of the Festive 500. Unfortunately the weather didn't want to play along so today consisted of a very wet 5 and half hours in the saddle racking up the miles. To be honest it was an eventful day and that was before I'd even left the house! I woke up at 5am and made myself some breakfast to give myself time then before I left at 7. Not sooner than I'd cracked some eggs ready to scramble, my Dad came bursting into the kitchen ready to confront the "burglar"! Now I appreciate that hearing a noise downstairs at 5 in the morning would startle anyone but I had told him I would be getting up early and I'm sure a genuine burglar would look somewhere other than the fridge if they did break in!
After that unfortunate misunderstanding out of the way I left the house, as planned, at 7am and had to be home no later than 12:30 to go out for our traditional family Christmas Eve meal. I ended up cycling through all 5 counties that make up Gwent on my route this morning. Starting off at home in Abertillery I headed up to Sofrydd before turning down to Crumlin. It was then onto Risca and then up to Fourteen Locks before heading over to Cwmbran. From there I headed over the Caerleon, up to Usk, across to Raglan, back to Usk via the Chain Bridge and then back to Pontypool, Hafodyrynys, Sofrydd and home again to Abertillery. In all I cycles 65 miles and pushed the 12:30 deadline to the limit! 65 miles might not be much of a dent in the 310 that the challenge demands and it has made me realise what a massive task this will be but it's a decent start and one I can build upon.
I also learnt a few things during my ride today as well; firstly, I have NO waterproof clothing! I learnt this the hard way today for sure and was drenched. I was fairly certain my cycling jacket offered some sort of protection from the water but I was wrong. Also my overshoes are just for cold weather riding, not wet weather riding and when your feet are soaking wet, they are no good at keeping then dry either! One good thing though was that although I had a waterproof cover over my little big bag (which incidentally isn't waterproof!) I put my phone in a sandwich bag. That turned out to be the only thing that was waterproof on the bike thankfully so my phone still works, yay!
The second thing I learnt is that trying to be a pro and cycle without your hands on the bars is a stupid idea, especially on Christmas Eve! Thankfully I managed to save myself before hurtling into a ditch and have learnt my lesson. I don't like hospitals at the best of times and wouldn't have been happy having to have my Christmas dinner on one!
The third and most important thing that I learnt today is that even when you make eye contact with someone driving a car, they probably still won't have seen you and will probably just pull out on you. Now I don't want to get into a big rant about drivers vs. cyclists, that's been done enough recently in the papers and on the telly. I'm just thankful and lucky that I had the sense and the opportunity to move out of the way. The driver did see me eventually and stopped quickly but if I had carried on in the line I was on I would have been over the bonnet for sure. Like I said, I'm thankful and also lucky that it didn't happen but it did shake me up a little bit. I've been lucky that in the couple of years I've been cycling on the roads, that is only the second incident I've had and the first one was my own fault so I guess we're even! With that out of my mind I was able to make it home without incident and enjoyed a little reward when I went out for the meal. Now I know I promised picture of my rides but today wasn't the weather to be getting the phone out and snapping away so instead, here is a picture of said treat! Have a fantastic Christmas everyone.
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