Christmas prep ride

For the last three years I've tried to cycle to my relatives in the neighbouring county of Lincolnshire for my Christmas visit (two successes, one hideous frozen near-death failure). Getting there usually involves one 72km ride (or a 100km ride, depending where I go first) followed by a bunch of eerily consistent 32km rides between places on different days. By the last day I'm usually totally ruined and somewhat frosty.

This will be the first year on the recumbent; so I thought I'd try an unladen test ride of the shorter first leg:


Some observations:

• I really need to start alternating which foot I touch down and kick off with. After a lot of stops and starts one of my hip flexors was not happy, despite my stretching it.
• My gears were skipping at the back, but only under load. Very frustrating. I think I got it adjusted towards the end.
• The flag and the flashing light on the pole gave me some peace of mind about being seen from the back; I suspect it's easy to let your mind wander when driving on a long, straight A-road.
• I am not going off-road onto so-called shared use bridleways ever again. Unpaved mud and gates every 100 metres are bloody ridiculous. One of them ended at a tall wooden fence rather than the road on the map, so I had to lift a very heavy bike above chest height to get over the bloody thing.

The Fuego does handle some of the harder offroad surfaces well, but I really need to replace that front tyre.

In a few weeks I might try the same trip with my trailer attached (waiting on a new tyre). It'll be a bit of a risk as It'll be a faff getting it back on the train.