2025 - Our Rides in Words, Photos, Maps and Videos

[Chargeride]

Yes, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!".

Mel Gibson with a blue face

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

A short time later I arrived in Kincardine and crossed the Kincardine Bridge before joining the cycle path towards Grangemouth! I then took the main road to Carronshore and arrived in Falkirk, from here I decided to head for the Falkirk Wheel which joins Forth and Clyde and Union Canals! I was hoping of see the wheel in action but I was out of luck, I grabbed a few photos of course!

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I have only seen it action once, its just your luck if you don't have hours to spare! I then took the canal path to Bonnybridge which was thankfully quiet!

Saw a documentary about the Falkirk Wheel. Amazing piece of machinery, totally improbable.

 

[Chargeride]

We have boycotted brands who remained in Russia such as Decathlon

Regarding the digital ID, Chris, the issue of yours (and your alikes) is any of you thinks they are a very important person for the government. Trust me, you are not that important at all Here, we have chip passports, a citizen app that holds all the information from the ID through the passport through the driving license and vehicles owned to medical records. It all works and makes the life easy.

Yes, but this is Poland that you should visit once A clean and safe country unlike England or The Netherlands

Its OK, took less than one day to collapse

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Its OK, took less than one day to collapse

Actually, it was 17 days.
Your island was partly saved by Polish airmen, innit.
Your great army had to flee from Dunkerque.
Don't even get me started

 

[RabH]

Saw a documentary about the Falkirk Wheel. Amazing piece of machinery, totally improbable.

Some very clever people were involved in this incredible piece of engineering!

 

[dodgeman]

I rode 14 miles yesterday and 17 today. The harvest is in full swing now mostly the corn but they are starting on soybeans too. The picture is a recently picked corn field.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

The Gem of Bolimów (a group ride with Marek S)

Marek has never been to the Bolimów Landscape Park. Last Saturday, he began his adventure by transporting his bike to the ride start by trains (he is a car person, so it was a nice distraction for him!) He is an ambitious person who spends long hours on a bike trainer under guidance of a personal coach, and he cares a lot about his nutrition. This combined with the high-end gear he rides makes him faster and faster and more endurant rider. Only we two set off for a pretty fast ride before 11:00 as some slower friends would have to be dropped! I rode my big Vado set at 40/100% for the main part of the ride; and I took a spare battery with me!

We already had 27 km under our belts where my casual rides with friends just begin. Marek liked the 8 km long "gravel freeway 33" so we stopped for a photo there.

Bolimów Sawmill, a resting place at 37th kilometre. The red cat didn't cooperate!

A military cemetery for German soldiers who were killed in Warsaw 1939-1945.

43rd kilometre. Marek has not been to Bolimów either, so I took him there as well.

My favourite spot en route: Bolimów Lake. 48th kilometre.

Eventually, the disaster struck! Tyre flats are the things that happen to other people... This time, a sharp shard of gravel cut my durable rear tyre and punctured the inner tube. I had everything for the repair, and also had my mate to help me. He was proud to inflate the wheel with an electronic pump. Effortless? Yes. Fast? Not. Noisy? Like hell! All good, only we wasted precious time!

As we reached Nieborów (64 km), it turned out my favourite Italian restaurant was closed for unknown reasons. We rode by the White Lady mansion where it turned out a new restaurant by name of Golden Duck was established meanwhile. It was a good change! White Lady was just an average eating place while Golden Duck turned out to be just excellent!

I chose Zalewajka (soup) and braised pork loin in forest fungi sauce. Zalewajka is a folk kind of soup; I'm not sure what it is expected to be but my portion was delicious, with big chunks of forest fungi in it! (The meals were fungi rich, that's the right season! Food spiced with fungi has a kind of luxurious taste!)

Marek is a very well organized person. He checked the train timetable and found out we could catch the earlier return train if we really tried. 'Easy' I said 'Why should we ride in stress?' As we hit the roads again, I went 70/70% assistance, and the ride became really fast. I noticed my mate became somewhat red in his face Eventually he managed 'Now we have a plenty of time. Why are we riding that fast?!" to which I replied 'Because we can and like it Pay attention to our average speed!'

So we zoomed the beautiful gravel Łowicz Road (gravel freeway 4) and reached the ice-cream shop in Skierniewice-Ruda in no time

Now, we had plenty of time for ice-cream, coffee, and for planning Marek's return home by trains!

Ride Map with POI.

 

[Chargeride]

My friends are very detailed and organised and its driving them crazy that I turn up, eat a mars bar, wear jeans, dont do any training runs or go the gym and stay with them on everything except high speed steep climbs.
They have been training for years, bought all the suspension, riding gear, supplements and latest tyres.

Its 90% the electric motor and all that effort only adds 2% to the remaining 10%.

Plus every ride I hugely improve while theyve settled into a routine

 

[Chargeride]

Actually, it was 17 days.
Your island was partly saved by Polish airmen, innit.
Your great army had to flee from Dunkerque.
Don't even get me started

I meant the digital ID, but I did see that picture of you holding your gun on Churchills desk.

 

[JGcycle]

A couple of pics from today's 20km ride:

 

[Mulezen]

Actually, it was 17 days.
Your island was partly saved by Polish airmen, innit.
Your great army had to flee from Dunkerque.
Don't even get me started

Poles did indeed fight courageously but I think Poland’s most significant contribution to the war effort was the cryptologists who fled with their work. Enigma broke from their spark

 

[Chargeride]

And here we are 90 years later sending jets to Poland as part of Nato.
Its all very depressing, I feel Stefan is getting a little patriotic and agitated as you might expect.
The bear is sniffing at the door.

 

[Mulezen]

And here we are 90 years later sending jets to Poland as part of Nato.
Its all very depressing, I feel Stefan is getting a little patriotic and agitated as you might expect.
The bear is sniffing at the door.

The bear in the US is not Russian.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

A poster by Pawel Jonca.

And here we are 90 years later sending jets to Poland as part of Nato.

The lesson learnt by Britain. Do you know of the "British guarantees" ot 1939 that were as effective as Britain had to defend her own territory later? Of the Czech Sudetenland annexation by Nazi Germany with the "policy of appeasement" by the UK in 1938?

 

[Chargeride]

Yes, and Im slowly being awakened to all the truths.
And now we have the ultra right saying we should have joined the axis.

Anyway, not here its a cycling forum.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

The Day Wahoo Stopped Working
A short Bolimoza solo gravel ride on Sunday

I woke up late on Sunday. Could have stayed at home for the rest of the day but the vision of food at Golden Duck had won over the laziness. Put on a set of warmer clothes and rode a train to Jesionka (literally: Autumn Jacket), or one of stations on the Skierniewice line. Wahoo worked perfectly on my commute to the nearest train stop, worth remembering.

As I started the ride from Jesionka, my Wahoo went crazy. Even if the device reported getting the GPS fix, the cursor on the screen remained stationary, the course was displayed in a wrong place, and the map wouldn't move! Multiple device restarts didn't help. Eventually, I set both Strava and Komoot for the ride recording on my phone. I used the Komoot map as it were a paper map. ("Pass three fire-roads on the left, turn into the fourth one and continue until you hit the road end".

This time, I took the opportunity of exploring trails less familiar to me. This is the #39, not quite perfect but a very long E-W fire-road.

A beautiful non-technical singletrack.

A gangway over R. Korabiewka. It was my first time there!

Cyclists on fire-road #4. Hydration packs have become ubiquitous. (I carried one, too).

An old forester's lodge by #4. Protected against further damage, it might be reconstructed one day.

A fire-road of that quality is rather the norm than exception in the "Gravel Cycling Heaven", so unknown to most Warsaw cyclists!

In Złota Kaczka/Golden Duck restaurant in Nieborów again! The set of potato pancakes and a separate bowl with Goulash is done differently than the rest (anyone else wraps goulash in a single big pancake). That tells me only good things about the cook, who thinks out-of-box to the delicious effect! The white cabbage salad was optional (I needed some vitamins!)

To avoid train schedule issues, I planned my ride precisely (unlike the one the day before). Now, I could zoom the Łowicz Road (#2) with no mental stress! (Here, multiple shrines hung on two trees).

A hot or a cold day, having ice-cream in the Iceland is a must for me post a Bolimów Landscape Park ride (See me clad in warm clothes).

Waiting just a couple minutes for the return train.

The mystery of Wahoo didn't stop there. The ride recording with just the distance/time ridden as well as power and cadence charts was useless as it had no map. Strava and Komoot recorded the ride properly. Now, after getting off the train, my Wahoo started working again. Friends of mine using Wahoo and Garmin tell me they are experiencing similar issues nowadays. Russian GPS spoofing? Could be. The GPS receivers in Garmin or Wahoo are sophisticated, and it is possible these are vulnerable to the hostile GPS interference. While the simple GPS receiver in the smartphone might be unaffected!

I lost my way once and that cost me 4 km extra! It is really bad not to have a working compass with you on a cloudy day! Perhaps I should buy a magnetic compass? (56 km for the day).

 

[Chargeride]

Latest Nato news.
Polish ebiker rides into swamp following Kremlin spoofed gps .

 

[Chargeride]

This Chinese Voge DSX900 is 9 grand, a very high quality bike from a company that makes engines for bmw.

This Amflow pro is 9 grand.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

This Chinese Voge DSX900 is 9 grand, a very high quality bike from a company that makes engines for bmw.

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This Amflow pro is 9 grand.

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I'd like to see the motorcycle on a technical singletrack downhill

 

[Rás Cnoic]

This Chinese Voge DSX900 is 9 grand, a very high quality bike from a company that makes engines for bmw.

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This Amflow pro is 9 grand.

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This always bugs me too. The sheer number of manufactured engine parts compared to an ebike is crazy for the prices to be the same. I'd guess that quantity of sales of motorbikes compared to ebikes is enormous coupled with the R&D expense for new ebike tech could be some of the reasons, but yeah it's sobering. You can buy a modern Renault 5 EV for £22K in Marsh Barton Exeter today!! European Car of The Year for just twice the price of many ebikes.