{"id":13927,"date":"2013-07-09T07:12:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T06:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=13927"},"modified":"2013-07-09T07:12:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T06:12:58","slug":"summer-day-3-time-for-a-bike-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/07\/summer-day-3-time-for-a-bike-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer – Day 3. Time for a Bike Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

This glorious weather that we are having makes such a difference. Everyone seems happier and this part of Wales is seen in its best light. It’s just a shame we all have to work and go to school.<\/p>\n

So, in order to make the most of it I was up early yesterday so that I could do some work at home and get my chores done by 9am. I also did the usual checking of my emails, and catching up on the web whilst the sun rose higher in the sky.<\/p>\n

\"Day<\/a>

Day 3 of Summer<\/p><\/div>\n

I then had to do some work in the form of gardening and painting and decorating for the rest of the morning but the plan was to be done by lunchtime.<\/p>\n

I also had tom pfaff around with our Wi-Fi router as yet again we have been having\u00a0broadband\u00a0troubles so I have had to re-locate it to the hall where I can plug it into the main telephone socket for testing purposes. It makes no difference but the ISP and telephone companies won’t test it unless it is in that socket. This means that the weather station PC can’t upload it’s data to my\u00a0Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station Website<\/a>\u00a0as it doesn’t have a Wi-fi card so needs to be next to the router so that it can connect via\u00a0Ethernet. I did buy a wi-fi dongle for the PC but\u00a0couldn’t get it working.\u00a0It seemed a shame to not let people know what the temperature was during this heatwave so I moved the router back to the office and reconnected the weather station to the web.<\/p>\n

We also seem to have loads of DHCP problems on our network – this is an issue with whichever router we use and we have 4 to choose from! So, I decided to go through and manually assign IP addreses to each and every wi-fi device that we use on the netwrok and also to reserve these IP addresses within the router so that they aren’t assigned to other devices. Hopefully this will help as I think the issues were caused by the DHCP router assigning the same IP address to more than one device. Only time will tell if it has worked.<\/p>\n

By 2pm I was done and was able to head out on my bike under the blazing sun.\u00a0With temperatures just topping 26\u00b0C it\u00a0was the hottest day of the year so far and the weather station was once again able to tell the world about it. I was supposed to do a 30 mile cycle but had decided that I had time for a longer one and quite fancied a nice day out on my bike. It’s rare for me to ride much more than 30-40 miles these days as most of my rides are fairly targeted training rides.\u00a0Instead today was just going to be a nice recreational ride through bits of Ceredigion, Powys and Gwynedd.<\/p>\n

I took a route that I last did back in 2011, a 60 mile route that took me 3hrs 13 mins which should see me arrive home at pretty much the same time as Anna. Fom Ynyslas I rode out to Tre-Ddol and then north along the A487 to Machynlleth. The traffic lights at Glandyfi have gone and the new bit of road there is lovely and smooth, but the lights have been replaced by another set before you get to Furnace. There seemed to be quite a few sets of lights on the ride today and they were all on red for me and all positioned towards the bottom of hills which took away any momentum I had. Never mind, it wasn’t supposed to be a race today.<\/p>\n

At Machynlleth I continued north along the A487 up the long drag\u00a0through\u00a0Corris. I wasn’t going hard but was making good progress. By the top my average speed was just above 19mph so if I kept this up I’d beat my previous time (even though it wasn’t a race!). The descent towards Tal y Llyn upped the average just slighty as I turned left onto the B4405 Tal-y-Llyn to Tywyn road. This is a lovely road to ride, slightly undulating but downhill overall with some stunning scenery first along the shores of the lake and then down the valley as it weaves it’s way through Abergynolwyn and Dolgoch. I was of course tempted by cafe stops here but resisted and pushed on towards Bryncrug where I turned left onto the A493 towards Tywyn.<\/p>\n

Once in Tywyn it was left again, following the A493 to Aberdyfi. My average speed was now up to 19.5mph and I was onto more familiar roads. I still had 20 miles to go to get home and no doubt the distance would start taking its toll in the form of fatigue as I hadn’t ridden more than 40 miles for a long time. I still felt good though and soon made it back to Machynlleth and onto roads that I know well, I was now retracing the route I’d made on the way out a few hours earlier.<\/p>\n

I felt surprisingly fresh and kept the average speed up all the way home to finish in a time of 3:05, with an average speed of 19.6mph. Nothing spectacular but I didn’t feel wasted by it either and had enjoyed a nice day out making the most of the sunshine in Wales.<\/p>\n