Wiltshire on a bike

A very cool weekend riding in Wiltshire! Fantastic to be off the main roads and covered some good country miles. I started in Basingstoke, and headed west towards Stonehenge. Up on the hilly backroads behind the ancient site, I was a little surprised to come across this:



It turns out Stonehenge is also the home of the Royal Artillery...perhaps practicing on the ley lines improves accuracy?

Anyway with wonderful roads like this:


I made great time over to Devizes which was the lunch stop. That section was 95km - sadly I didn't have enough battery to keep tracking the rest of the ride, but here's what I could capture:



I've got to try and figure out a way of extending the battery life on my phone, as it only seems to last 4-5hrs of map tracking. It will have to be a spare or a portable charger I guess.

Anyway, after Devizes I rode over to the beautiful village of Avebury. Go if you haven't been! Way better than Stonehenge, you can walk in amongst the stones, and the village itself is quite pretty too. A few photos:



I'll bet it wasn't easy moving this 4000 odd years ago





After that I headed north into Swindon ending the ride on about 130km. For day 2, ater a huge breakfast on Sunday morning it took me ages to get out the door, and I ended up practically racing to Reading thinking I'd be late for a lunch meet up with some friends doing the Reading half marathon. At one point I passed a guy on a ultralight racing bike and he didn't look too pleased about it! My pannier laden tourer being a bit of a bus in comparison. Anyway it wasn't the smartest thing to do in terms of training and I paid for it today with very stiff legs. It was fantastic to see everyone at lunch and they all did really well on the run, some damned good times actually.

Easter next weekend! So that means 2 extra days training...*whimper* ah well, bring it on....and thank you again for every word of encouragement, and kind donation.