Saturday Cycle Ride: Islip – Otmoor – Forest Hill

View the map of the route here. 

While Denise went out with the Isis group today, heading towards an ice cream shop I believe, I went out on my racing bike, by myself.

It seemed like everwhere I went I was heading in to the wind, making quite a lot of the ride very hard work.

There were also a couple of hills that were hard going. The first one, at just under 12 miles, was as the road running parallel to the M40 climbed to meet the road from Boarstall to Horton-cum-Studley. Fortunately it was very short and over quickly. Harder work was the hill coming out of Horton-cum-Studley, up past the turn to Beckley, as the road went through Woodperry. This starts fairly gently  and just seems to go on for a long time, then it just starts getting steeper. But, by dropping to my lowest gear and standing up in the pedals I was able to make it all the way up.

Total distance: 34.48km (21.4miles)

Max speed: 53.37km/h (33mph)

Total time: 1:25

Average Speed: 24.15km/h (15mph)