Hail, hotels and haircuts

One week from today I will be starting my journey with a 12 hour flight to Hong Kong, it seems like no time at all and ages away at the same time. I have a bunch of loose ends to sort out, for instance tomorrow I am getting my hair cut. My daughter and I picked up some first-aid supplies yesterday to augment my growing "medicine chest".

Today I had a couple of emails from Symbiosis, the trip organisers, one listing various contact details and showing the addresses of the hotels we will be staying in en route. The other confirming what time I will be picked up from my hotel in Bangkok for the start of the trip (7am). There were three other cyclists referred to in the second email, so I am wondering if that will be the total size of the group. When I cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats (LeJoG)a few years ago there were around 18 cyclists. I hope they are not too speedy.

My brother has warned me not to expect too much from the hotels we will be staying in, based upon his experiences of working in the area (rather than stays in the same hotels). He normally starts by killing the cockroaches apparently. Most will have air conditioning so I am sure I will have stayed in worse. For the LeJoG ride I camped so having a bed will be good.

We have Arctic winds blowing in to the UK at the moment and we had a frost in the garden this morning, but I am still resisting wearing long trousers when working from home or cycling. When it is cold it makes it that little bit harder to set off for a cycle ride. Today I found myself delaying setting off and ended up leaving the house around 3.30pm. Although it was sunny in the morning dark clouds were sweeping through. I am not really a fair weather cyclist, when I am not going somewhere in a hurry it can be exhilarating cycling when it is blustery. Rain is not really a problem, if it is warm then cycling clothes dry pretty quickly and if it is cold then I wear waterproof boots, leggings and jacket.

Today when I set off there was a small amount of rain in the air, so I wore a waterproof jacket, boots and shorts. I headed away from the Fens, trying to get a little climbing in before the B2S journey. As I cycled up one of the local hills, which at 65m is not too high, I could see rain clouds to the side and darkening skies ahead, as I climbed it got darker and darker.

Unfortunately for me I the wind seemed to be blowing the clouds towards me and my route was taking me towards the rain. As you can see the cars coming down the road had their light on so I stopped and turned on both a rear and front light. At this point I could did not need the lights to see so I set both to flashing mode. I find when I am driving the bicycles are much more noticeable with flashing lights. As I reached the top if the hill it started to hail. I can cope with most types of weather, hail is trickier.

Cycling up the hill was unpleasant, cycling down the hill was terrible. Although I was wearing a hat, hail stung my legs, managed to drop down inside my sunglasses and repeatedly hit my nose. The road surface was covered in ice, I was cycling slowly to avoid problems and in the end I gave up and sheltered by some trees. (I don't do this if there is lightening though.) This next photograph shows the road surface after the hail. You can see my tyre tracks in the hail.

The rest of the journey was uneventful except for my main front light starting to blink as I had not charged it before setting off, I did have two front lights though. Also on a narrow cycle path I was sufficiently blinded by the oncoming traffic that I failed to notice the oncoming cyclist. A good thing for both of us that he noticed me. Sorry mate.

When I got home it was reported on the news that there had been some car accidents caused by the hail on the road.