London to Brighton Bike Ride

Sunday saw Tom and I (and a couple of friends) complete the London to Brighton bike ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation. This was my second time on the UKs largest bike event, and it was Tom’s first. We caught the train up to Waterloo, then rode the three or four miles to the start on Clapham Common. The weather was perfect for cycling, not too hot, not windy and the atmosphere was pretty friendly.

The riders were a real mix of hard core cyclists for whom the 54 mile trek to Brighton was just a warm up, through to charity riders for whom it would be a real challenge. With so many cyclists, the going is always a little slow. However, this year was pretty bad. We ran in to at least 5 spots (mostly hills) where we had to get off and walk as people were queuing up the hill. The event organisers would have done well to have put marshals at the bottom of these hills reminding people walking to keep left and give room to those who wanted to ride up. These delays served to slow the pace down for everybody and that was a good thing as it meant people being forced to take breaks, giving the less well prepared a chance of making the finish.

I saw a few more accidents than last year – only one looked serious though – and there were plenty of people in fancy dress or on unusual machines. I particularly admired the unicyclist, the couple on the back to back tandem, and the people on roller blades!

Once again I managed to conquer Ditchling Beacon, where from the top riders can catch their first glimpse of the sea. And by popular demand, I did of course wear the full bright-orange lycra of the Euskaltel Euskadi cycle team, which drew quite a lot of comments. Maybe not for the right reasons though !!!!

We all made it safely to Brighton - a great achievement for Tom who isn’t a regular cyclist. All in all, a good day out and I was able to raise over £200 in support of the BHF thanks to all those people who sponsored me.

I’m now preparing for the London to Southend bike ride on 19 July, but I intend to ride to the start and then ride home afterwards, which will make it a round trip of about 100 miles. Wish me luck! And if you want to join me, let me know.

Sorrento

Just come back from a week in Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast. This was my first trip there. It’s quite a place – not as big as I expected – but very friendly. The holiday got off to an awful start when we queued 4 hours to check in with Thomson Airways. Their computer systems were down right across the country. Everyone was very patient – very British in fact – but I find it astonishing that a company the size of Thomson has no resilience or back up in their systems . As a result we didn’t arrive at our hotel until around midnight – long after the restaurant had closed. However, the hotel had kindly prepared a cold room service meal for our arrival, which was both very thoughtful, and very good. The hotel was the Hilton Sorrento Palace and whilst it was very nice and in a terrific, commanding spot high up the cliff on the outskirts of town, it was very American (glass and concrete) and really didn’t blend in with the style of the local architecture.

I have high standards when it comes to hotels, so it is disappointing to report that the hotel restaurant ran out of two out of three main courses on Sunday night – and it then took an hour to serve the remaining main course. Other than that, the service was excellent. There were no English speaking channels on the in-room tv except CNN and Bloomberg and internet access was incredibly expensive – 17 Euro per day for wif-fi or 35 cents a minute in the business centre. When will these places learn that these services are becoming an increasingly important part of the regular traveller’s requirement?

We experienced a couple of rainy (but warm) days, which gave us plenty of scope to people watch. What is it about Canadians and fashion sense? Other than that, we did a lot of lying in the sun, reading (Bill Bryson’s ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid), and generally relaxing. We did a tour of the stunning coast line, but unfortunately didn’t manage to get to Pompeii. That will be next time.

Coming back, I was very amused by the check in procedures at Naples. We were left waiting on the coach for 90 minutes outside the airport and only allowed in shortly before our flight was due to depart. All of which meant we marched straight through check in, security, passport control and straight onto the flight. No time for shopping. These days, when airports depend up tourists spending, it was odd we were not offered the opportunity to get rid of our few remaining Euros! Their loss.

All in all, I'd recommend Sorrento if you want a friendly resort, with plenty of historical sites and good weather. Just bear in mind it will take well over an hour from Naples airport on a very busy road - and that's without hold ups.

Great Kent Bike Ride

I spent a terrific few hours this morning completing the Great Kent Bike Ride in aid of the Canterbury Oast Trust. It was a beautiful morning when I left home, but by the time I got the start line in Ashford it was overcast and had been raining quite heavily. This meant the roads were wet (very wet in places) - normally not a problem, but yesterday I removed the knackered mudguards on my bike following the promise of good weather. So, for the first hour I suffered a lot of spray, however, it was warm and there was no wind to speak of - making the cycling much easier.

I opted for the longer 60 miles route, which was mostly on very quite Kent country roads, through villages with great names such as Shadoxhurst and Wittersham. The sun duly came out, making the ride very pleasant indeed. With only one real hill to test riders, stunning scenery, a friendly atmosphere and not an insane number of riders, this is definitely on the calendar for next year.

You can find the details of my route and time here.

Tiger Tales

Summer is almost here, which means the Tiger has been brought out of hibernation. The most important job was to get the car running properly. First attempts resulted in serious backfiring and a great reluctance to start. I went through the usual checks and I confirmed I had fuel and a spark, so the most likely cause was timing. Attention then started to focus on the new trigger wheel which had been installed to enable the Megajolt to run. On close examination, it turned out that the welds holding it to the crank pulley had failed, allowing the trigger wheel to rotate from it's fixed position on the crank. This was also the source of the expensive sounding rattle I had developed on the last track day of last year (not so expensive after all then), and was also almost certainly the reason the car wouldn't start. Jon from 7-Indulgence took the offending part away and re-welded it more securely. On its return, the car still wouldn't run on all four cylinders (there was no spark at the fourth cylinder), so after much head scratching the diagnosis was that the coil pack was faulty. The Ford Mondeo (the donor for these parts) uses a wasted spark system and there are only two positive leads to the coil pack, each supplying power to two cylinders. This meant that, if one of the pair of plugs was firing, then the coil pack was getting power, therefore the problem is from the coil pack onwards - and that can only mean the coil pack, the ignition leads or the spark plugs. Ignition leads and spark plugs were easy to test, and the conclusion was the coil pack had given up. A quick trip to the local motor factors had it sorted and the car then duly started, and I've had no problem since.

The only other problem I had to fix was a strange knocking noise, particularly when powering through a left had corner. This didn't seem to vary with speed, therefore probably not the drive train and very much sounded like something fouling the chassis somewhere. Close examination with the nose cone off showed that the slightly longer fan belt recently installed was allowing the alternator to bang against the right hand chassis rail as the engine was forced right in left hand turns. A test fit of various length belts from Halfords soon came up with one of the right length and the problem was solved.

Final job was a good clean, and the car was ready.

I attended the first track day of the year at Brands Hatch - a sessioned evening run by Focused Events. It was a terrific evening. The weather was perfect, there were few cars/drivers so it became an open pit lane session, and even then the track was clear for much of the evening. And the Tiger behaved impeccably. Apart from the rear fog light disintegrating and having to be 'modified' part way through the evening that is. I think this is probably due to its position immediately below the petrol filler cap and if a little fuel gets split it runs down the car onto the fog light, making the plastic brittle. Easy and cheap fix though.

So, all set for summer and probably another 4 or 5 track days.

Oliver

We went to see Oliver at the Theatre Royal in the West End a few weeks ago. The tickets had been bought a very long time ago when it was first announced that Fagin would be played by Rowan Atkinson, so it was a bit of a disappointment when we found out that Rowan had to take a couple of weeks off due to a hernia and Russ Abbott was to step into his shoes. However, having seen the show, I am happy to report that Russ did an excellent job. He brought plenty of character where it was needed, and just the right amount of humour too. And he can sing.

I have to say though, Russ was probably the best thing about this version of Lionel Bart’s classic. Just like Joseph, I found the production was ‘dumbed down’ – presumably for the benefit of those who were perhaps at their first West End show, having been seduced by the accompanying search for Nancy TV show. It has a touch of panto about it. The acoustic balance was all wrong, with the orchestra being far too loud and drowning out the singers on several occasions. I didn’t like the ‘mockney’ accents – that really didn’t work and contributed to making the show far less natural.

Jodie Prenger as Nancy was exceptionally popular with the audience as you’d expect, but I found her performance very one dimension and not at all fresh. Making every rendition sound as though it is the first one is one of the defining characteristics of a great musical performer. For me, Jodie just didn’t have it. She had probably sung her big number – As Long As He Needs Me – 100 times, and it showed. The phrasing could have been better and some more contrast would have improved things alot.

Having said that, Oliver is undoubtedly one of the greatest musicals ever written and it would be virtually impossible to mess it up completely because the simple melodies, great lyrics and colourful characters will always shine through. So, all in all, not as good as I’d hoped, but I still came out singing.

Musings of a cyclist

Just back from an easy couple of hours on the bike. Very nice morning to go over Polehill and throught the Kent countryside. The road from Otford to Eynsford is beautiful, scenic and is well worth the effort - if only the council would sort out the road surface. It's pretty appalling if you're on a pedal bike.

And while we're on the subject, how is it there's money to paint so many white, yellow and red lines over all our roads, put up a million signs and thousands of cameras, yet there's no money to repair the roads. Sort it out!

Everything expands

Some thing always seem to expand to fill the space available. Work expands to fill the time available. Spending expands according to the money available (and for many beyond the money available it seems). However, what about meetings? I've noticed in my office, that it doesn't seem to matter how many meeting rooms there are, or how many new ones we create, there are never enough.

Why is that?

We have so many tools that enable us to collaborate with each other now that I fear we are losing the ability to take decisions on our own. So we meet. Which is a shame, because technology delivers us the quality information in a timely way to allow us to decide and do. Yet we seem to have lost the confidence. Is this the blame culture impacting on business? Or is this just ultimate democracy?