Riv ‘n’ stuff (crow's bikes)

A glorious few hours spent out on the bike yesterday afternoon:

• Bike is great (phew). Fit is good, feels very comfortable and pretty nimble. Essentially I’ve built a lightweight touring bike and it’s pretty much perfect for the riding I do.
  
• Nitto noodles are literally perfect. Velox Grey tape turned out more sweet baby blue than grey but I like it and am looking forward to getting it filthy.
  
• Tires are great and the pairing of nobbly front smoother rear suits my mix of on/off road nicely.
  
• For anyone who was losing sleep over the gearing: 46/30 is a bit stiff, but not by much. Feel I could lose 2/4 teeth off the big. Small was fine, but I’d take 2 teeth smaller. My rd struggles to pull enough chain for a gap of 16 teeth to work at both ends of the cassette. Think 42/28 might be the sweet spot.
  
• Bag worked well on the back. I took too much stuff for a short ride but now know it works. Enjoyed not having a bar bag/front load.
  
  

Got out after lunch. Indirect route (more hills/fewer cars) out to penshurst. 30t small was fine on the steep hill. Stopped by a gate for a fettle with the front derailleur.

Then on to new bridlepaths for a bit of an explore. First one took me over towards chiddingstone hoath. Nice and smooth. Stopped for some pictures.

Linked up a few more bridlepaths to take me round to Heathfield. Bit of a mixture of surfaces but discovered my new favourite bridlepath somewhere along the way with a near perfect bivi spot at its mid point. Classic Kentish bridleway. The start is so narrow and rutted by horse hooves you’re tempted to give up (there can be nothing good this way, you think…), but persevere and it smoothes out to a wide sweeping downhill through trees before turning sharply left and pitching you into a steep, deep holloway, where the smooth surface gives way to deep loose leaf mulch with a few logs thrown in and virtually no traction. Real high octane stuff.

Perfect bivi spot

From Heathfield, I picked up the freshly resurfaced Forest Way back into town. The resurfacing has given the new bike a rather exquisite coating of fine chalk dust. I have popped it away carefully without cleaning to allow this to cure.

Bits to do:

• sort front light. Had been waiting to work out if I’d be using bar bags. I don’t think I will be, so a nice caliper mounted son edelux should be the ticket. Have binned the idea of rear dynamo light/routing and will just get a fancy blue lug rechargeable.
  - smaller chainrings. 42/28, maybe. (Edit: nah, this seems like way to much effort for such a small gain, having ridden it again. Just need to get a smidge stronger and it’ll be grand.)
  
• Bagman and compact camping setup for short overnights.