Whitley Bay

Something really strange happened yesterday. It wasn’t raining, and the sky was a really strange colour - blue. It just didn’t feel right to be running in such conditions, though looking onthe bright side, it was unbelievably cold. There were areas of the pavement where the waves had splashed up during the night, and...
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Bah. Howling gale from the North East. Raining cats & dogs. And just above freezing. The wind was such that the full set of waterproofs I was wearing gave up the fight within just over a mile. And after that there was another twelve miles of soaking slog. Highlights included my Sealskinz GoreTex...
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Whoever said that all the deep coal mines in England were closed in the 80s & 90s? There are still loads of them. You’ll find them at random locations in the roads of North Tyneside, Newcastle and Northumberland. As well as speleology, some of them also offer excellent opportunities for cave diving. Next week I’ll take...
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I had a late start at the office yesterday, arriving just in time for lunch. One of the questions I was asked as I locked my bike up,  by a colleague who lives just around the corner from me was, I’d quite like to ride to work, but don’t you get all sweaty? I laughed out...
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Last night was the 5th in this season’s North Shields Poly Grand Prix hadicap race series. Somehow, our team was in first place, but only leading on a technicality - we had the same number of points as the second place team. So there was everything to run for, and pretty much all of us...
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Well three cheers and a "Huzzah!" for the weather this weekend - the roads were neither covered in snow, nor frozen with sheet ice! What better excuse do you need to get out in the elements and experience some wind-in-your-face cycling? I did one of my favourite loops, taking in the three hills at Sidegate, Stanley,...
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Something strange happened overnight - it warmed up, and the ice over all the roads and pavements pretty much vanished. I hadn’t noticed this before I left the house, so with my ice shoes on, I sounded like the cast of Riverdance going for a run. What I did notice was the weather: blowing a...
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The icy weather continues. To try and keep my bike legs in shape, I’m booked in for weekly spin classes (where, no doubt, some young slip of a girl in the front seat will kick my butt), but I was also intrigued by the idea of studded tyres for riding on ice & hard-packed...
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There’s been some chatter recently about road signs. Apparently there are a whole new set of ‘em being rolled out across the US, as shown here on cyclelicio.us : In the UK, we’re seeing more of these ones, which allow bikes to contraflow the wrong way down one-way streets: Strangely, I’m not so...
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Remember the driver who managed to squeeze through an impossibly tight gap to get past me earlier in the week? The one to whom I should be grateful for not actually hitting me ? At the time, due to the feeble flash on my Blackberry, I couldn’t get a decent photo to record the details...
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