South Bucks Midweek Cycling Newsletter - June 2025

I think we can say that the Salisbury Holiday was a great success, with overwhelmingly favourable comments.  The weather was dry, though rather cool.  There were 36 riders split between EP and M rides with a choice on each of the three days. The non-riders seemed to have a good time too, using car or train to visit relatives and places of interest.  Salisbury itself is worth a couple of days sightseeing.  Most people had their evening meal at Sarum college at £18 in the spacious dining room with the option of drinks in the common room before and after.  The quality and quantity of food was good, with a vegetarian option each evening, but inevitably the choice was limited.  Some chose the cheaper option of a good, very large Wetherspoons not far away and often the Sarum College diners joined them after dinner. 

I would be happy to go again as there are plenty more places to explore.  You can see the photo album here.

The Rides Programme is still visible here. 

Did you enjoy the film The Great Escape?  Aylesbury rider Martin Knibbs did and writes below:

As a kid I loved this film and the father of somebody I worked with was on it. A year later as the war came to a close, the prisoners of war were forced by the Nazis to march West in the worst winter in living memory to avoid being used by the liberating Russians as a negotiating chip. Some POWs died during this march and very little is know about this episode of the war. A group of us ( fat old guys ) have been invited to cycle the route they took but we will extend the ride a little into Berlin and finish there on the 80th anniversary of VE day. The aim is just to make people aware of this event but also to raise a little money to help fund the Stalag Luft 3 local museum, raise money for Coventry Cathedral, a place I know well and support the RAF benevolent fund and British Legion. Above all to me, this is about reminding those of who never had to suffer what happens when a country is taken over by a ruthless dictator, and keeping those stories alive. Long may we remember and keep this in mind. There is more information about the march and history on the link if you are interested. Ah yes. And if you have a couple of quid to spare, it would be most welcome!

 Setting out on 5 May from the site of the camp in modern day Poland, the three-day ride covered 300km (186 miles), ending at the Neue Wache Memorial in Berlin.  You can read the BBC News article about it here.

Cycling UK offer Ride Leader training; it used to be in person, but now it is online.  I did the online version a couple of years back and even as an experienced rider and leader, it makes you think and you pick up some tips.  For many years I have planned the routes for the Tour de Vale, which needs a much greater level of risk assessment as you are dealing with large numbers of people of unknown experience.  A couple of my tips would be; if you plan a route anticlockwise there will tend to more safer left turns than right turns.  Where you cross a main road, it is better to turn right onto a main road and left off it; you don't want to have to wait in the middle of a busy road to turn.

You can find out more about the cycle training here.  The training is free to Cycling UK members, but is delivered online by a third party provider, so if you would like to do the training, please email me giving your name, email address and membership number, which I will pass on to Cycling UK who will send you an email with a linkto the training and an access code.

A cycling friend visited Tubingen in Germany recently with bikes on a campervan and was very impressed with the cycling infrastructure there, especially a long bridge which snakes over roads and railway lines with a gentle gradient.

You can see more about it here.  You can see more detail about the concept and design here.

It is very different from Buckinghamshire!

As you will have noticed if you watched the Giro d'Italia, just the highlights were available on Quest.  TNT Sports have acquired the rights to lots of sporting events and want a whopping subscription to watch them, which maybe worth it if you watch a lot of sport, but expensive for just the Grand Tours.

I was told that you can still see live TNT Sports events as follows on IOS devices only:

Download Strym.TV from the app store
-Install it & launch
-Add playlist
-Add: http://movitv.pro
-Choose 'channels'
-Select TNT Sports 1 (2)
-Watch the Giro live in HD

I haven't tried this and don't have any Apple devices anyway.

If you want to buy South Bucks Midweek kit, contact David Ullathorne and when we meet the minimum five items requirement , we can place an order.